Long COVID is the next chronic crisis — and Washington must confront it now

Long COVID is a serious, growing public health crisis. As many as 18 million, although estimates vary. Americans may be impressed. That’s why it continues to attract the attention of Senator Todd Young, who asked Secretary Kennedy to prioritize Long Covid research at his confirmation hearing last year. This week, the Senator had the opportunity to meet with the Secretary, who reported on the Department’s efforts to identify biomarkers at this year’s budget hearing and is committed to continuing that effort.

This is welcome news. For most of us, the Covid-19 pandemic is a distant but burning memory. But too many Americans still experience the pandemic as a daily reality, suffering from what is now known as Long COVID. In 2026, three years after the end of the Public Health Emergency, Long COVID patients report a wide range of symptoms that include significant cognitive dysfunction, extreme fatigue, post-exertional exhaustion, autonomic dysfunction, cardiovascular conditions, blood vessel pathology, air starvation, intravascular microcoagulation, tinnitus, and other neurological symptoms. Unfortunately, there is no molecular diagnostic test, no method that reveals the pathogenesis of the disease in detail, and no definitive treatment.

I dedicated my medical career to fighting deadly and debilitating diseases in the U.S. Army, the University of Maryland, and public service. Much of my medical practice today focuses on helping patients suffering from Long COVID. The current Long Covid crisis reminds me of my early days as a new physician confronting AIDS before the NIH and HHS made AIDS a research priority.

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More than three decades ago, I witnessed academia, federal laboratories, and industry dedicate themselves to solving AIDS. These efforts have transformed HIV/AIDS from a once fatal disease into a highly treatable and preventable infection from which individuals infected with the HIV virus can expect to live full, natural lives. This was due to an aggressive focus on what was possible and a major investment in innovation by the US Government. Similarly, with the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, President Trump had the foresight to fund Operation Warp Speed ​​and involve industry in the rapid development of a Covid vaccine.

Many mistakes were made during the Covid-19 response, but developing vaccines at record speed to protect vulnerable people was not one of them. Given the magnitude of the Long Covid problem, President Trump must now direct his team to accelerate innovative research that will discover and develop an effective treatment for Long Covid.

Unfortunately NIH failed Effectively investing the resources necessary to unravel our understanding of long COVID pathogenesis or develop a diagnostic test necessary to move the field forward.

In 2025, the Administration took a series of actions consistent with a pandemic running its course. The Office of Long-Term COVID Research and Applications has been closed and research funding has been cut. The CDC and NIH stated that they “will no longer waste billions of taxpayer dollars responding to a non-existent epidemic that Americans abandoned years ago.”

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While we would like this to be true, it is a mischaracterization of the current state of the epidemic and is costly. Productivity losses and medical costs associated with long COVID patients continue to cost the United States hundreds of billions of dollars each year. Unfortunately, research programs that could have produced a meaningful reduction in these costs were cut just as they were on the verge of producing results that would lead to a wave of clinical trials. Fortunately, some of the disruptions in this study were reversed. Unfortunately, overall investment in Long COVID is inadequate. More needs to be done.

Now is the time to prioritize the discovery of new treatments that will alleviate the suffering of the 18 million patients struggling with Long COVID. Simply put, NIH should aggressively fund Long COVID research efforts.

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I appreciate Secretary Kennedy’s emphasis on combating chronic disease. This is something that is long overdue. That’s why we call on Secretary Kennedy and the administration to aggressively address a major new chronic disease: Long COVID.

AIDS was once a mysterious, often fatal disease of healthy individuals. It is now a treatable and preventable infection. The same can be true for Long COVID if we invest aggressively in research and the clinical system that is urgently needed. Now is the time to empower HHS and industry to make this a reality and offer millions of suffering Americans a chance to live free from the effects of Long COVID.