As MuckRock and STAT News reported last year, after receiving $1.15 billion in December 2020, the federal government’s RECOVER initiative has moved slowly and devoted the majority of its funding to observational research. Now, several U.S. senators called for better oversight of the National Institutes of Health, pointing to criticism of the largest recipient of federal Long Covid funding so far.

Congress provided the NIH with $1.15 billion to help patients in December 2020 — and the agency has now spent most of that funding, according to a detailed new budget breakdown shared with MuckRock and STAT, with the majority going towards observational research rather than clinical trials.

A powerful Democratic lawmaker is interrogating the National Institutes of Health over its slow progress in addressing long Covid, citing a recent STAT and MuckRock investigation into the agency’s lack of urgency.

A new investigation from STAT and MuckRock, based on interviews with nearly two dozen government officials, experts, patients, and advocates, and more than 100 pages of internal NIH correspondence, letters, and public documents, shows that the nearly $1.2 billion in taxpayer money for long Covid research has resulted in few tangible results.

More than two years after the first Long COVID patients drew attention to their condition, the federal government’s response to this crisis has been frustratingly slow, experts say. If you are a patient, advocate, caregiver, researcher or someone else connected to the Long COVID community, we want to hear your thoughts on these questions.