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Tag: Long COVID Moonshot

Rep. Ilhan Omar to Introduce Major Long Covid Bill

On Friday, Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) will introduce a potentially groundbreaking piece of federal legislation in the House of Representatives—one allocating $10 billion in funding to fight Long Covid, the increasingly widespread, chronic condition that follows many Covid infections. The Long Covid Research Moonshot Act is a companion bill to one that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) introduced in the Senate in August.

“Long Covid is a silent health crisis impacting over twenty-three million Americans, including one million children,” Omar said in a statement to Mother Jones. (Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., is the co-lead on the legislation.) “I’m proud to lead this effort in the House to recognize Long Covid as the public health emergency that it is and invest in countering the effects of this terrible disease.”

Long Covid symptoms often include debilitating fatigue, and many people found to have it have also been diagnosed with conditions like myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome and postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome. ME/CFS, which is characterized by post-exertional malaise, is known to be associated with other infectious diseases—the CDC states that about 1 in 10 people infected by the Epstein-Barr virus (which 95 percent of adults get) experience ME/CFS-like symptoms. And research shows that repeated Covid infections increase people’s risk of developing Long Covid.

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Bernie Sanders calls for $1 billion for long-COVID moonshot

Congress must act now to ensure a treatment is found for this terrible disease that affects millions of Americans and their families. Far too many patients with Long COVID have struggled to get their symptoms taken seriously.

— U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders
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Millions of Americans suffer from long COVID. Why do treatments remain out of reach?

More than a year after catching COVID-19, Sawyer Blatz still can’t practice his weekly rituals: running for miles in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park or biking around his adopted hometown.

In many ways, the pandemic isn’t over for the 27-year-old and millions of other Americans. It may never be.

They have long COVID, a condition characterized by any combination of 200 different lingering symptoms, some of which, like loss of taste and smell are familiar from initial infections and some totally alien, like the utter exhaustion that makes it impossible for Blatz to walk much more than a block.

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