Health Committee on April 30th, 2020

Evidence of meeting #16 for Health in the 43rd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was vaccine.

A recording is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

Briefing on the Canadian response to the outbreak of the coronavirus

MPs speaking

Robert Gordon Kitchen

Also speaking

Erica Pereira Committee Clerk

Robert Fowler Professor of Medicine and Program Director, Clinical Epidemiology and Health Care Research, Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto, As an Individual

Rob Annan President and Chief Executive Officer, Genome Canada

Tarik Möröy President, Canadian Society for Molecular Biosciences

Volker Gerdts Director and Chief Executive Officer, VIDO-InterVac

Paul Hodgson Associate Director, Business Development, VIDO-InterVac

Cindy Bell Executive Vice-President, Corporate Development, Genome Canada

7:45 p.m.

Associate Director, Business Development, VIDO-InterVac

Dr. Paul Hodgson

I have been working on vaccine manufacturing capacity in VIDO-InterVac for over a decade. The federal government put an initial amount of money in to help build this in 2018, but it's a general consensus from emergency preparedness. It's not a hard calculation. If we have 35 million people, and we need a rapid-response vaccine, what capacity do we need in Canada, assuming the border is shut down for whatever reason and we're not able to get it?

I think you have seen a response to that. One of the questions we were asked a lot before the money was awarded was this: If we fund this, how many vaccines can you produce? That's a very tough question because efficiency of production changes for every vaccine.

7:50 p.m.

NDP

Don Davies NDP Vancouver Kingsway, BC

Finally, to you, Dr. Fowler, recently Canada's first ministers released a joint statement again defining the criteria that need to be in place in order to begin to take steps to reopen the economy, including ensuring that expanded health care capacity exists to support all needs, including COVID-19 patients and non-COVID-19 patients. From your experience, do we currently have sufficient capacity to support the needs of all patients? If not, how long do you think it will take to develop that capacity?

7:50 p.m.

Professor of Medicine and Program Director, Clinical Epidemiology and Health Care Research, Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto, As an Individual

Dr. Robert Fowler

We usually run our hospital over 100% occupied, and the ICU similarly. On a good day, I would say I worry about capacity. Right now we're looking in hospitals to slowly ramp up on procedures that we think we can do safely and not stress the system.

It's a bit of a wishy-washy answer, but I'd say it's a very delicate balance right now. I think we have to be very careful over the next couple of weeks.

7:50 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon

Thank you, Mr. Davies. That wraps up round three.

I'd like to thank all of our great witnesses for their information and for sharing their expertise and so much of their time with us. I certainly wish you well as you proceed along this very important trajectory that you're on in this quest for solutions.

I'd also like to thank the interpretation people and the staff for all their efforts today.

To the members, thank you very much for your time, and I look forward to the next meeting, which will be Tuesday.

Thank you. The meeting is adjourned.