One of the biggest misconceptions about COVID-19 is that the pandemic is over, said Dr. Michelle Harkins, a physician and clinical researcher at the University of New Mexico.

“Well, it’s not over,” Harkins told Source NM in an interview this week. “The pandemic is smoldering. There are still people that are getting sick. You can still get COVID. There’s still a significant burden of Long COVID that we’re going to have to address.”

The most recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention national early indicators, updated July 30, show that 3 percent of tests for COVID are coming back positive, and 0.4 percent of patients in emergency rooms have the infection.

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Harkins works as co-medical director of the Post-COVID Primary Care TeleECHO program, which is meant to help primary care providers recognize and diagnose Long COVID, a chronic condition defined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as an illness that follows a SARS-CoV-2 infection and is present for at least three months. Long COVID includes a variety of symptoms, including respiratory, neurological and digestive ones.

Harkins also is the division chief at the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center’s Department of Pulmonary, Critical Care & Sleep Medicine. UNM June 24 promoted Harkins and four others to distinguished professors, after UNM HSC Internal Medicine Department Chair Mark Unruh nominated her.

“I’ve just been afforded a lot of opportunity here and a lot of great support from my colleagues and my mentors, and I just love my job,” Harkins said. “It is an incredible honor.”

Harkins said there’s a lot of misinformation that claims people no longer need to receive vaccines or wear masks. In fact, vaccination is protective against severe sickness and Long COVID, she said.

“I personally still wear a mask when I’m on a plane and in the airports, because I don’t want to get sick, and I don’t want to bring it home to a family member, or ruin a trip that I’m supposed to go on because I have COVID,” Harkins said.

While no therapies currently exist for Long COVID, Harkins told Source NM that she advises doctors to talk to their patients, believe them and work with them to figure out their goals as we wait to understand what treatments will help.

“Long COVID is not one-size-fits-all,” she said. “We know it’s a huge burden to patients, and patients need answers. No one was listening to them. People were gaslighting them, and it’s real.”

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Her co-director Dr. Alisha Parada runs the only Long COVID clinic in New Mexico, where Harkins follows up with patients in her research.

What’s needed are multidisciplinary clinics to address the myriad of symptom complexes that Long COVID patients face, Harkins testified before Congress in January 2024.

“A Long COVID patient might come to a multidisciplinary clinic and need to see a neurologist, a cardiologist, and an internist, all for the same diagnosis of Long Covid,” Harkins told the U.S. Senate HELP Committee.

Earlier in the pandemic, Harkins started a different Project ECHO training program for doctors to treat patients hospitalized with acute COVID-19. She turned her focus to a Long COVID clinic for primary care providers when she received new funding.

She led clinical trials for acute COVID treatments, including those that established the effectiveness of antiviral remdesivir and anti-inflammatory baricitinib.

Those led Harkins and her team to become involved in the National Institutes of Health’s RECOVER study, which is due to end in October. She and her colleagues have been observing 148 adult patients as part of that study.

Harkins said her team has finished a clinical trial for the oral antiviral Paxlovid, and are currently running two other trials, RECOVER-ENERGIZE Post-Exertional Malaise and RECOVER-SLEEP Complex Sleep Disturbances.

In August, Harkins, Parada and UNM nurse practitioner Debora Bear will join leading Long COVID and other infection-associated chronic condition researchers at a conference in Santa Fe, where they will meet others who manage the disease.

“I’m very excited to go,” she said. “We will learn from others and share our experiences, and see what we can bring home.”