Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what funding he is making available to research projects on the long term health effects of covid-19.

The Department invests £ 1billion per year in health research through the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR). The NIHR continues to play a critical role in prioritising, funding and delivering research into COVID-19. The NIHR Recovery and Learning Call is currently open to researchers to submit proposals on the long-term health 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. This follows on from the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI)-NIHR Rapid Response Call and the UKRI-NIHR Rapid Rolling Call for research that aims to make a significant contribution to the understanding, prevention and/or management of COVID-19.

The NIHR and UKRI have invested £8.4 million in the Post-HOSPitalisation COVID-19 study (PHOSP-COVID), led by Christopher Brightling at the University of Leicester. This study is one of the world’s largest comprehensive research studies into the long-term health impacts of COVID-19 on hospitalised patients.