The U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) has announced further funding for its flagship Long COVID research program, called RECOVER, as well as new details about the program’s budget through 2029. RECOVER will receive an additional $147 million, building on $515 million allocated earlier this year and the original $1.15 billion funded by Congress in 2021.
Much of this additional funding, totalling $662 million in 2024, will be spent on new clinical trials through the program’s RECOVER-Treating Long COVID (RECOVER-TLC) initiative, NIH leadership shared in a press release and at the agency’s Advisory Committee to the Director meeting on Thursday. Some of the funds will also go to continue observational studies and research infrastructure that started in 2021.
The NIH shared new details about RECOVER’s budget for fiscal years 2025 through 2029:
- $300 million for clinical trials through RECOVER-TLC;
- $18 million for 20 pathobiology research projects, adding to 40 projects already funded by RECOVER;
- Additional funds for completing adult and pediatric observational studies, preserving and expanding “access to data and biospecimens,” and continuing RECOVER’s research infrastructure.
RECOVER has garnered criticism from people with Long COVID, scientists, and medical providers for moving slowly and failing to prioritize promising clinical trials over the program’s initial years of operation. Of its initial $1.15 billion in funding, more than half went to observational studies and only 15% (about $172.7 million) went to clinical trials, despite insistence from advocates that trials were vital to find treatments that may alleviate people’s debilitating symptoms.
Advocates and researchers also criticized RECOVER’s eight initial clinical trials, announced in summer 2023, for focusing on behavioral interventions and failing to support novel treatments. Most of the treatments under study have already been tested widely by people with Long COVID and related diseases.
RECOVER-TLC, housed at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), aims to respond to this criticism with a new round of clinical trials. The initiative kicked off in September with a three-day research meeting, followed by an invitation for feedback. NIAID has collected more than 300 suggestions of treatments to trial as of mid-November, the agency shared during a webinar last month.
Sharing the additional funding news on social media, Long COVID advocates expressed excitement. The Long COVID Campaign “applauds the NIH Director for this additional funding and urges [that it is] rapidly obligated to clinical trials and grants to leading researchers not funded to date,” the organization said in a post on Bluesky.
Still, this funding is far below what many have expressed is needed to support Long COVID research in the long-term. The Long COVID Research Moonshot Act, introduced by Senator Bernie Sanders in August, would provide the NIH with $10 billion over 10 years for Long COVID research, along with funds for other health agencies. Some Long COVID advocacy groups have called for even more funding, in the tens of billions per year.
In an interview with The Sick Times this summer, NIH Director Dr. Monica Bertagnolli agreed that more funding would be needed over time: “I think we’re not going to solve the problem with the current funding we have,” she said.
The NIH has invited people with Long COVID, scientists, and community members to contribute feedback to RECOVER-TLC, including sharing suggestions for treatments to test and expressing their interest in joining working groups. The feedback forms will be open through February 1, 2025.
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