Under orders from the Trump administration, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is closing its Office for Long COVID Research and Practice (OLC).
According to an email sent to POLITICO on March 24, 2025 from OLC Director, Ian Simon, the office is being shuttered as a part of the Trump Administration's HHS reorganization and that staff were given no details about whether the office would close immediately and whether they would remain employed by the federal government. “We are writing to let you know that the Office of Long COVID Research and Practice will be closing as part of the administration’s reorganization coming this week,” the email reads. “We are proud of what we have accomplished together advancing understanding, resources, and support for people living with Long COVID.”
The OLC was created in 2023, as a "quarterback" for the various NIH, CDC, and AHRQ agencies who were conducting research on Long Covid since 2020. Their role was essentially coordinating the research efforts of these various agencies so that long Covid initiatives were run efficiently. Considering that the CDC estimates that approximately 6% of the U.S. population suffer from some type of post-Covid condition. and the NIH believes that as many as 23 million Americans currently have a post-Covid condition (ranging from mild to debilitating, and in some cases life-threatening), the closure of the OLC will severely hamper research into therapeutics for a growing proportion of the public.
This is not the only Covid-related initiative under threat from the Trump administration. The NIH is terminating research grants that fund Covid research, including 29 grants from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID), many of which were grants from a program hoping to deliver antiviral drugs to prevent future pandemics.
According to the grant termination notice, obtained by Science, “The end of the pandemic provides cause to terminate COVID-related grant funds,” the notification states. “These grant funds were issued for a limited purpose: to ameliorate the effects of the pandemic. Now that the pandemic is over, the grant funds are no longer necessary.”
NIAID did not immediately respond to a request for a comment on the grant cancellations, but a spokesperson for its parent agency, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), sent Science an emailed statement. “The COVID-19 pandemic is over, and HHS will no longer waste billions of taxpayer dollars responding to a non-existent pandemic that Americans moved on from years ago,” it said. “HHS is prioritizing funding projects that will deliver on President Trump’s mandate to address our chronic disease epidemic and Make America Healthy Again.”
Additionally, a former AHRQ employee recently told STAT that grant funding that supports the Long COVID Care Network may also be in jeopardy because the Trump administration has targeted the agency and reduced its staffing. And back in February (during the deluge of Trump Executive Orders and data information purge), Betsy Ladyzhets, a Long Covid reporter, and founder of the The Sick Times, a Long Covid news website, reported that the U.S. Department of Labor's Job Accommodation Network removed Long Covid's status a disability, along with resources on accommodations.
The unwinding of long COVID initiatives and information is particularly confounding, given new Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s platform to tackle chronic illness in the U.S. During his confirmation hearings, Kennedy avidly pledged to invest in long COVID research and the development of new treatments.
During his confirmation hearings, Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind), asked Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to commit to directing funding for long COVID research toward potential treatments and diagnostics if he were to be confirmed as health and human services secretary. "Absolutely, senator, with enthusiasm,” Kennedy said in his hearing Wednesday before the Senate Committee on Finance.
However, considering RFK Jr's stance on other public health policies, it's not surprising that he changed his stance after his confirmation. During the height of the pandemic, he sought to revoke the Emergency Use Authorization for the COVID-19 vaccines, only months after their rollout in early 2021. During his confirmation hearing, he claimed he was only opposed to the vaccine in young children, repeating the debunked claim that young children do not get seriously ill from Covid. However, health experts acknowledge that it is because of the vaccines that children have been largely spared and that vaccines have likely saved millions of children's lives from COVID-19.
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