Budget and other project documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act show how the National Institutes of Health set up its flagship long Covid research initiative, including the scientific expertise that government reviewers prioritized in selecting research teams to lead the RECOVER program and the early goals and timelines. Experts who reviewed the contracts and project documents say the agency set itself up for failure.

As MuckRock and STAT News reported last year, after receiving $1.15 billion in December 2020, the federal government’s RECOVER initiative has moved slowly and devoted the majority of its funding to observational research. Now, several U.S. senators called for better oversight of the National Institutes of Health, pointing to criticism of the largest recipient of federal Long Covid funding so far.

Congress provided the NIH with $1.15 billion to help patients in December 2020 — and the agency has now spent most of that funding, according to a detailed new budget breakdown shared with MuckRock and STAT, with the majority going towards observational research rather than clinical trials.

A new investigation from STAT and MuckRock, based on interviews with nearly two dozen government officials, experts, patients, and advocates, and more than 100 pages of internal NIH correspondence, letters, and public documents, shows that the nearly $1.2 billion in taxpayer money for long Covid research has resulted in few tangible results.

The comments from a senior New York City environment official overseeing its wastewater surveillance program represent a sharp departure from a joint statement made to MuckRock and the Gothamist last month by the city’s health and environment agencies, which called wastewater surveillance a “developing field,” stressing a need for further research before it could be used to inform policy action.