'There’s so much that we don’t know': Funding allows U of S researchers to examine long COVID

Money from the Government of Canada will enable researchers at the University of Saskatchewan (U of S) to look more into long COVID.

The $20 million announced on Friday was directed at the Post COVID-19 Condition Research Network, of which the U of S is a part, according to a U of S news release.

“There will be a substantial increase in long COVID research capacity within Saskatchewan,” Dr. Gary Groot, professor of community health and epidemiology, and surgery at the USask College of Medicine, said in the release. “We are probably going to really punch above our weight.”

Groot is also the co-leader of population health and modelling research for Long COVID Web.

• Get the CTV News app for Saskatchewan breaking news alerts and top stories 

He said that long COVID has a variety of symptoms that are experienced for three months or longer in those who have had COVID-19.

“It impacts at least 200 different body systems,” Groot said. “It’s emerging [that] there are at least three clusters of symptoms—neurological symptoms, respiratory symptoms, and cardiac symptoms—and people can be in more than one cluster, and there’s also the mental health aspect due to the illnesses associated with long COVID.”

Other universities in the network include the University of Toronto, University of British Columbia, Université de Sherbrooke and over 250 researchers and collaborators, according to the U of S release.

The U of S said the money will go to research on long COVID, which includes hiring graduate students, post-doctoral fellows, and researchers.

“Long COVID will affect a significant percentage of the population, and then there's so much that we don't know,” said Groot. “Anything we discover and learn in the [Long COVID] web, I will be able to take directly to the Saskatchewan Health Authority and to the Ministry of Health.”

About 15 per cent of people who have had COVID-19 report having long COVID symptoms, which is about 1.4 million people in Canada, the release said.

A recent report called Post-COVID-19 Condition in Canada: What We Know, What We Don’t Know and a Framework for Action was completed by a task force that included U of S professor Nazeem Muhajarine.

“We are still at a very, very early stage of doing work in long COVID in Canada,” said Muhajarine. “The report really sets up the work that we need to do.”

The paper suggests ways to address long COVID-19 as well as changes to socio-economic policy, and changes in infrastructure and systems responding to chronic conditions around the country, the release said.

“Much like with COVID itself, for us to see progress in this area quickly, there needs to be a co-ordinated and concerted effort across the research landscape,” Groot said.