By Christopher Rowland, Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post, The Washington Post, January 25, 2022
A pair of Democratic House members asked the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in a letter Tuesday to release data on the number of Americans who suffer lingering symptoms of coronavirus infection, including breakdowns along race, gender and age.
The National Institutes of Health and the CDC have launched detailed studies of long-term covid, often shortened to “long covid,” but those examinations are expected to take years. In the meantime, policymakers lack good information about how many people in the United States and worldwide suffer from long-term, debilitating effects of the disease.
“People suffering from Long covid have been ignored and overlooked for far too long. Collecting and publishing robust, disaggregated demographic data will help us better understand this illness and ensure that we are targeting lifesaving resources to those who need them most,” Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), who co-signed the letter Tuesday to the CDC, said in an emailed statement. “We’re calling on the CDC to publicly report this data because that which gets measured gets done — and we can’t have an equitable recovery from this pandemic without it.”
Comments (0)