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Plans for a mega vaccination clinic in Guelph capable of 2,000 shots a day

Doctor on several front lines of the COVID fight sees light at the end of the tunnel

Just hang in for a while longer, urges Dr. Doug Friars, adding there’s light at the end of this pandemic tunnel. 

“We are, as a society, getting tired. Maybe I’m a bit of an optimist, but at this time I think there’s light, so hang in,” said Friars, who is involved in the battle against COVID-19 on several fronts. “I believe in the next three or four months we’re going to be there.”

In addition to being a family doctor, Friars is lead physician at the COVID-19 Assessment Clinic, a principal investigator in local vaccine trials for a Quebec-based company and he’s part of the local health unit’s vaccination rollout planning committee.

“It’s the fight we’re all in,” he said of the pandemic and community efforts to prevent the virus’ spread. “We’re gearing up. 

“We have some really neat stuff going on with collaboration with our family health team, planning a big (vaccination) clinic … with capacity for 2,000 injections a day,” he said, adding Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph Public Health can handle another 700 per day. 

“We’re going to be looking to pop-up clinics at places we need to go to get people who basically, from an equity and health perspective, we make sure those people are having access,” Friars continued. “We’re working hard in town to get ready so that we can really give the vaccines out.”

Reached by phone on Monday, Dr. Nicola Mercer, the local medical officer of Health, confirmed

“There is more than one in the works right now," said Mercer. “We are definitely working on three or four centres where people will be able to go and get their vaccine."

One very large vaccination site will be announced in Wellington County soon, said Mercer.

Once the supply of vaccine becomes more readily available WDG Public Health could potentially ramp up to offering up to 10,000 vaccinations per day, said Mercer.

“Once we get vaccine, and I belieive when it comes we could end up with some larger quantities, that we need to get it out the door and into peoples’ arms as quick as we can," she said.

Vaccine supply is a major issue. At the moment, the only vaccines approved by Health Canada come from Pfizer and Moderna, and they require specialized deep freezers for storage, which limits distribution.

However, others are working their way through the approval process. They include vaccines from AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson, as well as Medicago, the company Friars is working with during its Phase 2 trail.

“Every one of these vaccines, the ones in the news, every one of them is based on the same spike protein that is being introduced to our immune system,” Friars said.

“We’re very optimistic about the Medicago (vaccine),” he added, calling it “an amazing technology” that will play an “important role” in mass vaccination plans.

If we are to defeat COVID-19, several types of vaccine are needed, said Brian Ward, chief medical officer for Medicago. 

“We need to be cheering for a great number of the vaccines,” he said, noting it would take 15 years for “giant companies” like Pfizer or Moderna to produce enough doses for everyone in the world on their own. “We actually need many vaccines to succeed.”

The Medicago vaccine varies significantly from those already on the market, known as mRNA vaccines, which are based on a new approach. They’re designed to teach human cells to make a protein that triggers an immune response that in turn prompts the production of antibodies to fight against the real virus.

In this case, the vaccine features “virus-like particles” from a protein produced in plants which initiate an immune response, Ward explained.

Like the others, it requires two doses delivered about 21 days apart. However, it can be stored in a standard refrigerator, as opposed to a specialized deep freezer, Ward noted, making it much easier to distribute and administer.

The vaccine is at the tail end of a Phase 2 study looking at dose size and the potential for side effects. That’s where Friars and Dawson Clinical Research enter the picture, as one of 20 locations throughout North America where Medicago’s vaccine is being tested and studied.

“To be part of the solution to this whole thing, we’re hoping, is really quite exciting.”

The Phase 2 study involves 900 volunteers in three categories – healthy adults ages 18 to 65, healthy people over 65 and adults with health conditions that put them at greater risk of having serious issues as a result of contracting COVID-19, such as obesity, chronic respiratory illness and heart disease.

Dawson Clinical Research has recruited more than 40 volunteers to take part in the study, all from the healthy categories. Friars said all the testing of people at greater risk is happening south of the border.

If all goes well with this part of the process, Phase 3 is expected to get underway next month. That’s when 30,000 volunteers will be needed and the vaccine’s effectiveness will be measured.

Those trials will be conducted on a much wider scale, including sites in the United States, Latin America, the United Kingdom (UK) and some European countries, as well as Canada. Once again, Dawson Clinical Research is set to participate. Though no firm commitment has been made, Friars anticipates the local research effort will include between 150 and 300 volunteers, all healthy adults.

Ward hopes to receive emergency approval from Health Canada and the American Food & Drug Administration “as early as late spring or early summer.”

If that happens, the vaccine will be produced at a small facility in Quebec as well as a larger site in North Carolina, he explained.

“There’s every reason to believe that our vaccine will do pretty well against some of the variants, like the UK variant,” Ward said. “We still think it’s going to do quite well against even the South African variant, but it might not do quite as well against the South African as it will against some of the other variants.”

Medicago signed a $173 million contract with the federal government last fall that would see it provide 20 million doses of vaccine this year, with an option for another 56 million in 2022. 

Anyone interested in volunteering for the study through Dawson Clinical Research should visit dawsonclinicalresearch.com for details.


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Richard Vivian

About the Author: Richard Vivian

Richard Vivian is an award-winning journalist and longtime Guelph resident. He joined the GuelphToday team as assistant editor in 2020, largely covering municipal matters and general assignment duties
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