Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Clue To Long Covid Could Be Lingering Virus, Spike Proteins
The virus that causes Covid-19 can remain in some people’s bodies for a long time.  A growing number of scientists think that lingering virus is a root cause of long Covid. New research has found the spike protein of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in the blood of long Covid patients up to a year after infection but not in people who have fully recovered from Covid. Virus has also been found in tissues including the brain, lungs, and lining of the gut, according to scientists and studies. (Reddy, 9/8)
Dozens of health care practitioners from across the country signed onto a recent Zoom call to talk about pain. Specifically, how much pain their patients with long Covid were in, what kind, and what — if anything — they could do about it. Members of the group, an ad-hoc collaboration of providers at more than 40 long Covid clinics, have met for more than a year but are still grappling with the same kinds of questions they did at the beginning: how to treat a new, complex and debilitating condition affecting millions of Americans. (Mahr and Messerly, 9/7)
Also —
A group of top researchers, clinicians and patients stepped up efforts to combat Long Covid on Thursday, launching a new billionaire-backed initiative to search for drivers of the poorly understood condition and ultimately find treatments to help the millions of people around the world living with the disease. (Hart, 9/8)
The Long COVID Research Initiative will try to determine if SARS-CoV-2 is still present in those with long-haul symptoms and, if so, how it might be contributing to their ailments. (Money, 9/7)
