A Halifax research team will be working with a Chinese manufacturer to run the first Canadian clinical trials for a possible COVID-19 vaccine.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made the announcement during his daily remarks on Saturday.
The trials have been approved by Health Canada and will take place at the Canadian Centre for Vaccinology (CCfV) at Dalhousie University in Halifax.
“Research and development take time, and must be done right. But this is encouraging news,” Trudeau said.
He added the National Research Council will be working with the manufacturers so that if these vaccine trials are successful, the vaccine can be produced and distributed “here at home.”
Health Canada said in an email Saturday that their decision followed a careful review of the trial application, which “met the necessary requirements for safety and quality.”
Researchers say about 600 participants will be needed
Scott Halperin, director of the CCfV and a professor of pediatrics, microbiology and immunology at Dalhousie University, said they are building on trials that have already begun in China.
The vaccine strain, called Ad5-nCoV, uses another virus that’s been modified so it can’t cause infection in humans, he said. It expresses one of the COVID-19 antigens on its surface called the “spike protein.”
If participants develop antibodies to fight this antigen,”one hopes that one would be protected against COVID-19,” Halperin said.
Once their team gets approval from an ethics board, Halperin hopes the trials can begin within the next two weeks.
Dr. Scott Halperin, director of the Canadian Centre for Vaccinology and a professor of paediatrics and microbiology and immunology at Dalhousie University, hopes the trials will begin in the next two weeks. (CBC)
In Phase 1, Halperin said there will be just under 100 participants of different ages involved. In the early stages, they will begin with “very healthy individuals” about 18 to 55 years old. Once their team sees some “early safety data” from those trials, he said they will bring in those 65 years of age and older.
Then in Phase 2, Halperin said they will add 500 additional participants, who might be anywhere from 18 to 85 years old.
Their team follows participants for six months after they’re immunized, Halperin said, so the whole study runs about six to eight months. However, after even a few weeks of each phase they will likely be able to learn enough to move onto the next stage.
The Phase 1 trials are “quite intensive” in terms of monitoring, Halperin said, including screening to ensure participants are healthy.
Once someone is given the vaccine, the CCfV team tests their blood, holds physical examinations, and looks at other signs and symptoms including immune response. People must also keep a diary of any symptoms.
Participants will come in a couple times in the first week, then less frequently as the weeks go on, for a total of nine to 13 times over the six months.
Director hopeful Phase 3 could come this fall
Halperin said they may be able to move to Phase 3 studies as soon as they have good data from Phase 2, which could be as early as “late summer, early fall.”
The third phase is designed to see “if the vaccine works,” Halperin said. It looks at whether participants who have received the vaccine are protected from getting COVID-19, if exposed to the virus.
Halperin said the only part of the study their Halifax team is conducting alone would be Phase 1.
When they move into Phase 2, likely in a couple months, they will be joined by multiple centres across the country through the Canadian Immunization Research Network (CIRN).
The network was originally set up around the 2009 H1N1 pandemic by the federal government, to have a national capability to “rapidly” start Phase 1 studies in extreme cases like this, Halperin said.
“It’s satisfying that the infrastructure was there in order for us to be able to respond,” he said.
An ’emergency release’ could come before study ends
He also noted that this vaccine is not the only one which will be going into clinical trials in Canada. Halperin said there will likely be others announced within the next few weeks.
Any potential vaccine won’t be publicly available until after Phase 3 is complete, Halperin said, which “could take quite a long time.”
However, Health Canada could allow the vaccine to be used before that in an “emergency release,” and there are some talks ongoing now about how that could be done.
That was the case when the Ebola vaccine was used in west Africa before Phase 3 trials were complete, Halperin said.
The CCfV team consists of nurses, data managers, research assistants, laboratory personnel, and three or four other physician investigators.
VANCOUVER – Contract negotiations resume today in Vancouver in a labour dispute that has paralyzed container cargo shipping at British Columbia’s ports since Monday.
The BC Maritime Employers Association and International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 514 are scheduled to meet for the next three days in mediated talks to try to break a deadlock in negotiations.
The union, which represents more than 700 longshore supervisors at ports, including Vancouver, Prince Rupert and Nanaimo, has been without a contract since March last year.
The latest talks come after employers locked out workers in response to what it said was “strike activity” by union members.
The start of the lockout was then followed by several days of no engagement between the two parties, prompting federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon to speak with leaders on both sides, asking them to restart talks.
MacKinnon had said that the talks were “progressing at an insufficient pace, indicating a concerning absence of urgency from the parties involved” — a sentiment echoed by several business groups across Canada.
In a joint letter, more than 100 organizations, including the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Business Council of Canada and associations representing industries from automotive and fertilizer to retail and mining, urged the government to do whatever it takes to end the work stoppage.
“While we acknowledge efforts to continue with mediation, parties have not been able to come to a negotiated agreement,” the letter says. “So, the federal government must take decisive action, using every tool at its disposal to resolve this dispute and limit the damage caused by this disruption.
“We simply cannot afford to once again put Canadian businesses at risk, which in turn puts Canadian livelihoods at risk.”
In the meantime, the union says it has filed a complaint to the Canada Industrial Relations Board against the employers, alleging the association threatened to pull existing conditions out of the last contract in direct contact with its members.
“The BCMEA is trying to undermine the union by attempting to turn members against its democratically elected leadership and bargaining committee — despite the fact that the BCMEA knows full well we received a 96 per cent mandate to take job action if needed,” union president Frank Morena said in a statement.
The employers have responded by calling the complaint “another meritless claim,” adding the final offer to the union that includes a 19.2 per cent wage increase over a four-year term remains on the table.
“The final offer has been on the table for over a week and represents a fair and balanced proposal for employees, and if accepted would end this dispute,” the employers’ statement says. “The offer does not require any concessions from the union.”
The union says the offer does not address the key issue of staffing requirement at the terminals as the port introduces more automation to cargo loading and unloading, which could potentially require fewer workers to operate than older systems.
The Port of Vancouver is the largest in Canada and has seen a number of labour disruptions, including two instances involving the rail and grain storage sectors earlier this year.
A 13-day strike by another group of workers at the port last year resulted in the disruption of a significant amount of shipping and trade.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
The Royal Canadian Legion says a new partnership with e-commerce giant Amazon is helping boost its veterans’ fund, and will hopefully expand its donor base in the digital world.
Since the Oct. 25 launch of its Amazon.ca storefront, the legion says it has received nearly 10,000 orders for poppies.
Online shoppers can order lapel poppies on Amazon in exchange for donations or buy items such as “We Remember” lawn signs, Remembrance Day pins and other accessories, with all proceeds going to the legion’s Poppy Trust Fund for Canadian veterans and their families.
Nujma Bond, the legion’s national spokesperson, said the organization sees this move as keeping up with modern purchasing habits.
“As the world around us evolves we have been looking at different ways to distribute poppies and to make it easier for people to access them,” she said in an interview.
“This is definitely a way to reach a wider number of Canadians of all ages. And certainly younger Canadians are much more active on the web, on social media in general, so we’re also engaging in that way.”
Al Plume, a member of a legion branch in Trenton, Ont., said the online store can also help with outreach to veterans who are far from home.
“For veterans that are overseas and are away, (or) can’t get to a store they can order them online, it’s Amazon.” Plume said.
Plume spent 35 years in the military with the Royal Engineers, and retired eight years ago. He said making sure veterans are looked after is his passion.
“I’ve seen the struggles that our veterans have had with Veterans Affairs … and that’s why I got involved, with making sure that the people get to them and help the veterans with their paperwork.”
But the message about the Amazon storefront didn’t appear to reach all of the legion’s locations, with volunteers at Branch 179 on Vancouver’s Commercial Drive saying they hadn’t heard about the online push.
Holly Paddon, the branch’s poppy campaign co-ordinator and bartender, said the Amazon partnership never came up in meetings with other legion volunteers and officials.
“I work at the legion, I work with the Vancouver poppy office and I go to the meetings for the Vancouver poppy campaign — which includes all the legions in Vancouver — and not once has this been mentioned,” she said.
Paddon said the initiative is a great idea, but she would like to have known more about it.
The legion also sells a larger collection of items at poppystore.ca.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
