Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he plans to commission research into the long terms effects of covid-19 on people whose symptoms last longer than three weeks.

The Department invests over £1 billion a year in health and care research through the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR). The following calls are currently open to researchers to submit proposals on the long-term effects of COVID-19.

The NIHR Recovery and Learning Call will fund research to better understand and manage the health and social care consequences of the global COVID-19 pandemic beyond the acute phase. The research will focus specifically on health outcomes, public health, social care and health service delivery and to mitigate the impact of subsequent phases and aftermath.

This follows on from the UK Research and Innovation-NIHR Rapid Response Rolling Call for COVID-19 research (closing at the end of June), which funds projects that could make a significant contribution to the understanding, prevention and/or management of the COVID-19 outbreak within 12 months.