World leading immunologist Professor Danny Altmann has declared the future burden of long COVID to be "so large as to be unfathomable". He has published a scientific review of long COVID in Nature, asserting if 10% of acute infections lead to persistent symptoms, up to 400 million people could be in need of support for long COVID worldwide. While the Australian government has allocated $50m for long COVID research, in New Zealand there has been zero investment for bio-medical long COVID research to understand and treat the condition. Professor in the Faculty of Medicine, Department of Immunology and Inflammation at Imperial College London, Professor Altmann has been studying T cells for four decades, and is interested in why people suffer debilitating consequences so long after COVID infection.