The Brief

It's been five years since COVID-19 was declared a pandemic. But many patients with long COVID have yet to find meaningful recovery.

Around 6% of adults in the U.S. — or roughly 18 million — are estimated to be living with the damaging aftermath of catching the virus, according to research and a long-running survey of U.S households, although numbers are still difficult to pin down because the definitions vary.

And it's not a thing of the past — new patients are still showing up in doctor's offices.

"I think that's one of the biggest misconceptions," says Hannah Davis, co-founder of the advocacy group, Patient-Led Research Collaborative,

"We've seen so much long COVID in just the last year or two."

Research on long COVID has coalesced around a handful of explanations for what could underpin the illness, but that hasn't yet translated into major breakthroughs for patients who need care.

There are still no approved treatments for the condition, which can span many organ systems and symptoms depending on the patient, and can include shortness of breath, brain fog, fatigue and post-exertional malaise, among other things.

Under the Biden administration, long COVID patients had pushed for more federal funding and a refocus of research priorities toward treatments.

Now, patient advocates and scientists have to make their case to new decision-makers, guided by the priorities of the Trump administration — and do so at a moment of turbulence for biomedical sciences with funding imperiled for many institutions.

"Regardless of party or political position, long COVID patients have been failed to date by our leaders," says Meighan Stone, executive director of the Long COVID Campaign, who's busy lobbying the new administration and Congress.

Stone acknowledges there are certainly some "heartfelt disagreements," between the patient community and Trump's picks to lead federal health agencies, particularly on policies related to curbing the spread of the virus, but she argues patients need to find places where there's common ground.

"We don't have the luxury of sitting out the next four years over any ideological differences."

Slow progress in research, but promising new trials 

For many patients, the day-to-day reality has not changed dramatically. Finding clinicians who are well-versed in the nuances of long COVID remains challenging, patients say.

The approach to care generally focuses on relieving specific symptoms and related medical conditions that someone develops such as autoimmunity or POTS, says Dr. Monica Verduzco-Gutierrez, chair of rehabilitation medicine at UT Health Science Center San Antonio.

"It is a lot of symptom management right now," she says. "We need significant treatment trials so patients have the possibility of getting a cure."

Even though progress has not come nearly fast enough, those involved in long COVID research emphasize there's reason for optimism.

In the last year alone, Davis notes scientists have published important work in a variety of areas — on blood clotting, the impacts of exercise, evidence of viral persistence in the spinal cord, and loss of blood flow to the brain, to name just a few.

With this research in hand, the field is now ripe for a broader push to test different therapies.

"When trials launched a couple of years ago, there was hope that it would be easy and we would just hit a home run," says Dr. Michael Peluso, who runs a large research program on long COVID at the University of California, San Francisco.

"The first round of trials that have been reported out have shown this is going to be more complicated — we all sort of expected that."

By Peluso's estimation, there are currently in the neighborhood of 50 drug trials underway for long COVID, a considerable increase from a few years ago when he only counted about a dozen.

"We have drugs that can target almost every single one of the different mechanisms that we think might be contributing to long COVID, but so far we've launched way too few trials" to thoroughly test them, says Peluso.

To get there will require more participation from drugmakers, which have largely stayed on the sidelines. Plus, researchers want to identify a biomarker for the illness that can be reliably tracked across multiple trials; and they say a better coordinated clinical trial agenda is needed.

Different theories on long COVID's cause

Viral persistence — the theory that an ongoing infection is hiding out in the body — has featured prominently in some of the early trials, which have leveraged antivirals and monoclonal antibodies in hopes of extinguishing an ongoing infection.

At least half a dozen other mechanisms may also drive the illness, though.

Among them: Immune dysfunction, the reactivation of dormant viruses like herpes, dysregulation of clotting proteins, and trouble with the microbiome. All of these could be equally, if not more important as viral persistence, and have received less attention in clinical trials up to this point, says Peluso.

Davis is closely following a number of up-and-running trials, led by individual research groups and universities, which are testing immunomodulators, HIV drugs, rapamycin, intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG), enzymes called nattokinase and lumbrokinase, and other therapies.

Private funders have stepped up to back some of these efforts. For example, the non-profit PolyBio Research Foundation has raised millions of dollars to spearhead some of its trials. The federal government, however, remains pivotal in guiding the broader long COVID agenda, given its role in funding research and eventually greenlighting treatment.

Through the RECOVER initiative, Congress has already poured more than $1 billion into this work and last year appropriated an additional $662 million to be spent in the coming years. About half of that money is supposed to support clinical trials, led by the National Institutes of Health.

A new lobbying push from patients

Ensuring these studies — and the funding for them — continue is the number one priority right now, says Stone of the Long COVID campaign.

With upheaval across federal health agencies and science funding in doubt, it's hard to know what's in store for an emerging field of research like long COVID.

"It's going to take a different type of strategy than we have been doing for the last four years," says Davis.

Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, the nominee to lead the NIH, both explicitly pledged to support long COVID research during their Senate confirmation hearings.

Stone says Kennedy's focus on chronic diseases — and specifically the president's Make America Healthy Again Commission — could be an opportunity for long COVID patients and those suffering from infection-associated chronic conditions.

On the other hand, Kennedy has indicated he'd like to deprioritize research on infectious diseases and even petitioned to have federal regulators pull the COVID-19 vaccine off the market in 2021.

Kennedy and Bhattacharya have also heavily criticized measures aimed at mitigating COVID transmission. But many in the long COVID community are frustrated that the ongoing spread of the virus has been normalized and point out that reinfections still carry a risk for long COVID.

After taking office, President Trump was quick to disband a long COVID advisory committee that took months to stand-up. That came as a disappointment to Verduzco-Gutierrez, who was a member. But she says it doesn't stop any of the work that she and others on the committee will be doing, alongside advocacy groups.

Stone managed to get a moment in the hallway with Bhattacharya after his confirmation hearing earlier this month and says he reiterated to her that he's serious about long COVID.

"Patients should take Secretary Kennedy and take Dr. Bhattacharya at their word, and if the administration doesn't meet the patient community in that, then we will keep calling for action the same way that we did under President Biden," she says.
Copyright 2025 NPR

Public officials across California are contemplating what to do with dozens of streets, parks and libraries named in honor of civil rights icon César Chávez in the wake of allegations he sexually assaulted two girls and a woman decades ago.

The allegations surfaced in an investigation by the New York Times published earlier this week that sent shock waves across the country.

Chávez, who was head of the United Farm Workers union, is widely recognized as one of the most influential labor leaders in U.S. history, known for founding the union and for leading national boycotts of grapes to improve working conditions for farmworkers.

Chávez died in 1993.

Many state and local leaders, including L.A.’s mayor and county supervisors, suggested changing the César Chávez holiday on March 31 to Farm Workers Day. March 31 was Chávez’s birthday.

In Sacramento on Thursday, Democratic leaders of the state Legislature said they would push for such a change.

“The farmworker movement was never ever about one man,” Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas said at a news conference. “It was built by tens of thousands of workers. People who labored in the fields, people who organized, people who sacrificed and who stood up when it was hard.

“We have a responsibility to remember the movement and to move it forward with integrity.”

Also on Thursday, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass signed a proclamation renaming the city's César Chávez Day holiday as “Farm Workers Day.” The city recognizes the holiday on the last Monday of March.

“I grew up as a child admiring the farmworker movement,'' Bass said. “I didn't think I was ever going to eat grapes again because my family boycotted grapes.”

The grape strike, organized in part by Chávez, lasted five years from 1965 to 1970.

Multiple allegations of sexual assault

The New York Times investigation uncovered multiple allegations that Chávez had sexually assaulted girls and women in the 1960s and ‘70s, when he was head of United Farm Workers, including union co-founder Dolores Huerta.

Huerta, now 95, told the Times the rape and sexual assault resulted in pregnancies that she kept secret. Huerta said she gave the children up for adoption after birth.

In a statement, Huerta said in part: “... for the last 60 years [I] have kept a secret because I believed that exposing the truth would hurt the farmworker movement I have spent my entire life fighting for.”

Bass said Thursday she met Chávez once and “thought it was an opportunity of a lifetime.” She said her heart “broke” this week when she heard the allegation that Chávez had raped Huerta.

The mayor said renaming the holiday would allow people “to reflect on how the struggle of farmworkers has elevated working people everywhere.”

She added that the city would need to consider changing the names of buildings, streets and other things named in honor of Chávez.

For example, César Chávez Avenue runs through the heart of the Boyle Heights neighborhood. Several murals of Chávez dot the city.

Bass said she had been in contact with Chávez's family, and they supported her action.

The mayor was joined at the proclamation signing by Councilwoman Eunisses Hernandez, who said in a statement that the farmworker movement has always been about the power of the people, “especially the women whose labor built it and too often went unseen."

“As we honor that legacy, we also have a responsibility to tell the truth about harm and stand with survivors,” Hernandez said.

Councilwoman Ysabel Jurado also attended the news conference. She said the movement doesn’t belong to one person.

“Farm Workers Day honors the workers, families and organizers still in the fields and still fighting for fair wages, safe conditions and dignity,” the statement from Jurado read. “And it recognizes that this movement is carried forward every single day by people whose names we may never know but whose impact continues to define the spirit of Los Angeles.”

Other cities and counties 

Many other cities and counties are considering wiping Chávez's name from public spaces.

L.A. County Supervisor Hilda Solis said she would introduce a motion looking at renaming the county’s César Chávez holiday.

Supervisor Janice Hahn suggested the county consider renaming Chávez day “Farm Worker Day.”

“For those of us who grew up admiring the farmworker movement, today's news is heartbreaking,'' Hahn said in a statement Wednesday. "But as in any other civil rights movement, men were only half the story. The abuses of one man will never diminish the extraordinary sacrifices, accomplishments, and legacy of the women of the farmworker movement.

“It's time we put them first.”

The process for renaming streets and other public structures varies from city to city and school district to school district. It could take months before many cities move to erase Chávez's name from public spaces.

You can follow your city council agenda to keep up with what’s going on, or better yet, reach out to your representatives on the council and county Board of Supervisors to make your voice heard on the issue.

California, along with a coalition of 23 other states and a dozen cities and counties, sued the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday for rolling back the scientific finding requiring it to regulate greenhouse gas pollution.

“This isn’t a small technical change,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said at a press conference in Sacramento. “It’s a sweeping decision that would increase pollution, worsen climate change and put the health of millions of Americans at risk. And it’s not based on any credible science.”

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, seeks to reinstate a 2009 conclusion known as the endangerment finding — that carbon dioxide and other planet-warming gases threaten public health and welfare.

The climate rule served as the scientific basis for the agency’s ability to limit emissions under the Clean Air Act.

The Trump administration finalized the repeal of the endangerment finding Feb. 12. A post on the EPA’s website stated the change would also dissolve restrictions on vehicle emissions and save Americans $1.3 trillion.

“As a result of these changes, engine and vehicle manufacturers no longer have any future obligations for the measurement, control and reporting of GHG emissions for any highway engine and vehicle, including model years manufactured prior to this final rule.”

Sanchez said California’s authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under the landmark 2006 Global Warming Solutions Act, AB 32, signed into law by then-Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, “remains unchanged.”

Los Angeles, San Francisco and Santa Clara counties also were parties to the suit.

KQED’s Laura Klivans contributed to this report.

California voters are split along party lines on two controversial proposed ballot measures — a billionaire tax and an initiative requiring voters to show government ID when they cast a ballot — according to a new poll.

The survey from UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies found 52% of voters backing a proposed one-time, 5% tax on the net worth of billionaires. The money would be used to fund health care programs, which are being cut by the Trump administration; 33% of registered voters said they were opposed and 15% said they are still undecided.

Whether voters back the measure, which is being pushed by a health care labor union, is highly correlated to their partisan leanings: 72% of Democrats said they’d support the billionaire tax if it qualifies for the November ballot, while the same percentage of Republican voters are opposed. Voters with no party preference were more split, with 51% backing the wealth tax.

The voter ID ballot measure is more evenly divided, with 44% of voters in support and 45% opposed. Republican voters said they would overwhelmingly vote “Yes.” Democrats are unified in opposition, with only 19% in support.

IGS co-director Eric Schickler said that while neither measure has qualified yet for the ballot, most voters surveyed said they are aware of the proposals.

“The Billionaire Tax Initiative starts out in a relatively strong position, but with it polling just above 50%, that still leaves room for what will be an intense, expensive campaign,” he said. “The Voter ID Initiative looks like it faces an uphill climb: given the strong Democratic opposition, it needs very strong support among nonpartisan voters, and it currently seems to be falling short. But it is still very early.”

If they move forward, the campaigns around both measures are expected to be expensive and bruising. Democrats are split on the billionaires tax: Gov. Gavin Newsom is opposed, Silicon Valley Rep. Ro Khanna said he’s in support, and many other Democrats — including legislative leaders and candidates for governor — have offered support for the concept but expressed concerns with the details of this proposal.

Some billionaires have already left California, and others, like Google co-founder Sergey Brin, are lining up huge campaign war chests to fight the measure.

And Democrats are gearing up to fight the voter ID measure, which several Southern California Republican lawmakers are pushing. The proposed ballot measure comes as the U.S. Senate debates what’s known as the SAVE Act, a far more draconian voter ID measure.

Backed by President Donald Trump, that legislation would require a passport or birth certificate to register to vote, essentially eliminate mail-in ballots and require states to hand over their voter rolls to the federal government. It already passed the House but is facing a steep climb in the Republican-led Senate.

The poll was conducted between March 9 and 15 among more than 5,000 registered California voters. It has a sampling error of plus or minus 2 points.

The Los Angeles Unified board members who represent schools named for César Chávez are calling for their renaming.

A New York Times investigation published Wednesday found the famed labor leader Chávez sexually abused girls and women including United Farmer Workers co-founder Dolores Huerta.

“In light of this information, we believe it is necessary to move away from traditional César Chávez-centered celebrations and lessons tied to the state holiday and instead prioritize student safety, dignity and truth,” read a statement from board member Kelly Gonez and Vice President Rocío Rivas.

The renaming process would likely take months and include meetings with school staff, students and parents. In the meantime, district leaders and educators are grappling with how the allegations of abuse change lessons about a figure who helped galvanize generations of activists.

“ I think we are all deeply, deeply troubled by the allegations that have come forward over the last couple of days,” said Andres Chait, the acting Los Angeles Unified superintendent.

Chait said that March 27 will continue to be a school holiday (the currently named César Chávez Day, on March 31, falls during LAUSD’s spring break).

A district spokesperson provided a statement Wednesday that said a review of curriculum and resources related to Chávez is underway “to ensure the emphasis remains on the important work of the farmworker movement, not on any one individual.”

How are community members and educators reacting?

Last semester, students at STEM Academy of Hollywood learned about Chávez and the movement to unionize farmworkers in Irene Atilano’s ethnic studies class.

Atilano said students walked into her classroom Wednesday with questions after seeing the allegations of Chávez’s abuse on social media.

“ They were just like, ‘What do you think?’” Atilano said. “And I'm like, 'It doesn't matter what I think. What do you guys think? Let's learn together.'”

Their reactions ranged from “this really sucks,” to a sense of loss.

“This is why we don't try to idolize people,” Atilano said. “We want to make sure that we focus on the community, we focus on the movement.”

Atilano said she plans to teach ethnic studies again and is thinking about how misogyny and patriarchy intersect with political and social justice movements.

“It can be found everywhere,” Atilano said. “I’m trying to see how I can make those connections in the future, but it's a work in progress.”

On March 10, the LAUSD board unanimously approved a resolution recognizing Chávez — one of many such resolutions over the years — and pledging to provide curriculum and resources aligned with the foundation that promotes his legacy, education and economic development. The board last year also passed a resolution honoring Huerta.

In response to LAist’s questions about curriculum related to Chávez, an LAUSD spokesperson provided a statement that said the district is providing additional instructional materials “to support classroom learning, ensuring students continue to engage with themes of leadership, service and social justice in age-appropriate and meaningful ways.”

LAUSD board member Tanya Ortiz Franklin issued a statement Wednesday morning with links to resources related to sexual and domestic violence.

“Just my own team, we’re seven women … and our own triggers, our own stories are coming out,” Ortiz Franklin said. “You can imagine that happening everywhere in homes, in classrooms, the adults having to manage this, and then also, helping students process.”

César Chávez Elementary in El Sereno is one of several schools in Southern California named after the labor leader.

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How would renaming work?

Blanca Juarez was at César Chávez Elementary in El Sereno on Wednesday to pick up her daughter. With a father and grandmother who were both farmworkers, she said she was troubled by the news.

“He was like the only hope in those days — the only one speaking for all of the — and now, well, I don’t know. I don’t know what to say,” Juarez said.

She said it was too soon to be talking about renaming the school.

Gonez and Rivas said they would work with the communities surrounding the elementary school and the César Chávez Learning Academies in San Fernando to identify new names.

In recent years, the school renaming process has included meetings with staff, students, parents and community members and a public vote. The LAUSD board must vote to finalize any name changes.

LAist Deputy Managing Editor Fiona Ng contributed to this story.