COVID-19 Information & Updates

The Public Health Emergency is Over, COVID-19 and Other Respiratory Viruses Are Not

New Jerseyans are encouraged to continue taking precautions to keep themselves and their loved ones healthy. Though the federal public health emergency for COVID-19 has ended, COVID-19 and other respiratory viruses are still among us.

COVID-19 vaccines remain free and available to everyone. Find locations offering COVID-19 vaccines and boosters on the Covid-19 Vaccine Finder. If symptoms appear, get tested for COVID-19. As always, keep children home from school and child care centers if they are feeling unwell.

Vaccine & Booster Shot Information

Understanding Long-Term COVID-19 Symptoms and Enhancing Recovery:

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) published a blog on understanding long-term COVID-19 symptoms and enhancing recovery. For the past two years, NIH’s National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), and my National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) along with several other NIH institutes and the office of the NIH Director have been leading NIH’s  Researching COVID to Enhance Recovery (RECOVER  ) initiative, a national research program to understand PASC. The initiative studies core questions such as why COVID-19 infections can have lingering effects, why new symptoms may develop, and what is the impact of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, on other diseases and conditions. Answering these fundamental questions will help to determine the underlying biologic basis of Long COVID. The answers will also help to tell us who is at risk for Long COVID and identify therapies to prevent or treat the condition. The RECOVER initiative’s wide scope of research is also unprecedented. It is needed because Long COVID is so complex, and history indicates that similar post-infectious conditions have defied definitive explanations or effective treatment. Indeed, those experiencing Long COVID report varying symptoms, making it highly unlikely that a single therapy will work for everyone, underscoring the need to pursue multiple therapeutic strategies.

Additional Resources: