Government announces $50m to fight long Covid as report calls for action

The federal government has announced a $50m cash injection for research into long Covid.

Health Minister Mark Butler. Picture: Getty Images

The federal government has announced a $50m cash injection for research into long Covid, as a parliamentary inquiry into the condition delivered its report calling for better data collection and guidelines for diagnosis and treatment.

Health Minister Mark Butler pledged a further $50m from the Medical Research Future Fund to improve understanding of the condition, generate evidence to inform policy and clinical guidance and improve health outcomes, adding that his department was working on developing a national plan to respond to long Covid.

The announcement on Monday came as the House of Representatives standing committee on health, aged care and sport tabled its report on long Covid and repeated Covid infections, following a sweeping inquiry which received almost 600 submissions.

The report has recommended that the government fund a single Covid-19 database which will sit in the future Centre of Disease Control, the adoption of the World Health Organisation’s clinical definition of long Covid and a nationally co-ordinated research program be established to study the condition.

It also recommended the Department of Health and Aged Care update its vaccination strategy, expansion to the groups eligible to access antiviral treatments, greater support for general practitioners to manage long Covid, and the government establish an advisory body to assess the impact of poor indoor air quality in high-risk settings.

The inquiry, chaired by Labor MP and paediatrician Mike Freelander, heard from numerous people who had lived experience of long Covid who described how the debilitating but poorly understood condition, which has a broad range of symptoms which “vary in number and severity” could “profoundly impact many aspects of a person’s life”.

The report said there were likely hundreds of thousands of Australians with long Covid.

It also recommended pharmacists be allowed to initiate antiviral treatment for Covid-19.