Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what research his Department has commissioned on (a) the effects of and (b) treatment for long covid.

The Department funds research on health and social care through the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR).

Over the last five years, the Government, through NIHR and the Medical Research Council (MRC), has invested over £57 million in long COVID research, with almost £40 million of this through two specific research calls on long COVID. The NIHR specifically has invested £42.7 million towards research funding for long COVID. The projects funded aim to improve our understanding of the diagnosis and underlying mechanisms of the disease and the effectiveness of both pharmacological and non-pharmacological therapies and interventions, as well as to evaluate clinical care. Further information on the research into long COVID commissioned through the NIHR can be found at the following link:

https://www.nihr.ac.uk/about-us/what-we-do/covid-19/long-COVID

The NIHR and MRC are committed to funding high-quality research to understand the causes, consequences and treatment of long COVID, and are actively exploring next steps for research in these areas.