Health committee  Manufacturing capacity in Canada is one of the biggest concerns, and that was highlighted very early on in the pandemic, and before. Part of the funds that the government announced early on in the pandemic were to be provided to the National Research Council, NRC, to upgrade its

Health committee  Absolutely. As I mentioned in my initial comments, that's part of it. We all know what the steps are in order to get vaccines to individuals. Hopefully, all of that is being worked on simultaneously. There is now a vaccine task group that's been tasked to oversee the process, and

Health committee  It's very important. We don't have full information about a natural immunity after a natural infection with SARS-CoV-2. That's a very important priority for the immunity task force. Canada's immunity task force is undertaking seroepidemiology studies on patients, just on the gene

Health committee  Sure. In terms of the trial we're doing with CanSino, which may or may not be the first, depending on when the vaccine arrives, that vaccine is, as I'd mentioned before, an adenovirus 5, which is a normal human respiratory pathogen that causes an upper respiratory infection, that

Health committee  We haven't yet started the trial with that vaccine here in Canada. We're hoping it will start in the very near future. That vaccine has undergone phase one and phase two studies in China. The phase one studies were quite successful and were published in The Lancet Infectious Di

Health committee  We'll be using all of our CIRN clinical trial sites as these trials roll out. Medicago's going to be using sites across Canada with its vaccine. We are talking with at least four others besides CanSino that will be rolling out, hopefully, over the next several months as they beco

Health committee  CanSino is not going to be avoiding phase three trials. CanSino is currently, working with the WHO and other country partners, planning phase three studies, which are going to take place in various countries around the world. As with all manufacturers, they will be undertaking ph

Health committee  No, that's not at all what we're thinking. What we'd be doing is exactly what was done with Canada's Ebola vaccine, where phase one and two studies were done and then phase three studies and an emergency authorization were used, and that stopped the epidemic in west Africa. In

Health committee  The anti-vaccine movement, or anti-vaccine sentiment, is a challenge to any vaccine program, whether it's COVID-19 or any of our routine vaccinations. There's been a lot of effort to understand that movement and to address it. The anti-vaccine sentiment runs a wide range, from p

Health committee  Overwhelmingly in Canada, Canadians are pro-vaccine. The vaccine hesitancy probably accounts for approximately 20% of the population. When we talk about vaccine hesitancy, that doesn't mean 20% of people aren't getting immunized, but they may delay their immunization or want to t

Health committee  At this stage, we have an agreement. We're not receiving any funds from CanSino. The funds are from the Canadian government, the National Research Council.

Health committee  I am not sure of the exact amount. It's in the range of approximately $800,000. We haven't received any funds as of yet, but the agreement is done. The funds will come in once the study starts.

Health committee  It's a different vaccine. The Oxford vaccine uses the chimpanzee adenovirus. As Dr. Neame mentioned, that's not expressing the protein but expressing the genetic material that then produces the protein. CanSino's is an adenovirus 5, which is a human adenovirus strain, and it expr

Health committee  It's a similar platform. There are about five or six different platforms. This is one platform, which has another organism, a non-pathogenic organism, express the proteins of SARS-CoV-2.

Health committee  The race is for successful vaccines, not just a vaccine. As Dr. Neame mentioned, we need vaccines and we need multiple vaccines. It's not just because of manufacturing capability, but that is clearly one reason. We need multiple companies with multiple facilities to produce vacci