Hello, 

I wanted to get in touch today to apologise for the email that some of you received on Saturday from us about face coverings. 

We have listened to the valuable feedback that we’ve received from you, our contributors, and now understand that this wasn’t the right thing to do. We thought selling donated masks for charity would be a good opportunity to raise money for long COVID research. However, we did not consider the implications of working with a commercial company.

I want to personally apologise for this, and assure you that all of us here at the COVID Symptom Study will learn from this experience. Without you, our loyal contributors, none of our scientific discoveries or hotspot detection would be possible. We are incredibly grateful for your commitment.

We also want to reassure you that we haven’t shared your personal details with any commercial companies, and we never will. This email was, as always, sent by ZOE, the healthcare company behind the app.

Thank you for taking the time to read this email and for your understanding.  

Professor Tim Spector

On behalf of the COVID Symptom Study