New York City-based NYU Langone has received nearly $470 million from the National Institutes of Health to build a national study cohort of tens of thousands of people to accelerate research on the long term effects of COVID-19.
The health system serves as the NIH's key center for its Researching COVID to Enhance Recovery Initiative, known as Recover, and will use the funding to issue sub-awards to more than 100 researchers across 30 institutions.
"Normally it would take two or three or four years to set up something like this, given the scale," said Francis Collins, MD, PhD, director of the NIH. "But given the urgency, we have moved to put this together considerably fast but without sacrificing rigor," he said during a Sept. 15 news conference.
The extensive study cohort will support studies involving adult, pregnant and pediatric patients. It will include clinical information, laboratory tests and analyses of participants in various stages of recovery following COVID-19 infection.
"Together, these studies are expected to provide insights over the coming months into many important questions including the incidence and prevalence of long-term effects from SARS-CoV-2 infection, the range of symptoms, underlying causes, risk factors, outcomes, and potential strategies for treatment and prevention," the NIH said.
In February, the NIH announced plans for a major research program on long COVID-19, which is estimated to affect 10 percent to 30 percent of people who contract the virus.