Two members of London’s Western University are among the nine people who were appointed Friday by the Province of Ontario to sit on its new coronavirus vaccine panel.
The panel, headed by retired chief of national defence staff Gen. Rick Hillier, will oversee distribution of the vaccine when it becomes available.
Among those sitting on the panel, officially named the COVID-19 Vaccine Distribution Task Force, will be Linda Hasenfratz, Western’s 23rd chancellor, and Maxwell Smith, a bioethicist and assistant professor with the university’s Faculty of Health Sciences, the province announced.
In a statement released by the university, Hasenfratz, who is also CEO of the car parts giant Linamar, said she was honoured to be asked to play a role in the distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine in the province.
“Ensuring everyone is vaccinated as efficiently and effectively as possible is key to controlling this pandemic and restoring some semblance of normalcy in our lives; it is critical that every Ontarian is engaged and part of that process,” her statement read.
Smith, the university says, also co-directs its Health Ethics, Law, and Policy Lab, and serves as an ethics advisor for the World Health Organization.
It will be up to the panel to ensure effective and ethical delivery of a vaccine, according to Health Minister Christine Elliott.
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Key tasks include delivery, logistics and administration, clinical guidance as well as public education and outreach.
Others appointed to the panel include:
- Dr. Dirk Huyer — Ontario’s chief coroner and coordinator of provincial outbreak response
- Dr. Homer Tien — trauma surgeon and president and CEO of Ornge
- Dr. Isaac Bogoch — infectious diseases consultant and internist at Toronto General Hospital
- Ontario Regional Chief RoseAnne Archibald of Taykwa Tagamou Nation
- Dr. Regis Vaillancourt — director of pharmacy and integrated pain services at Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario
- Angela Mondou — president and CEO of TECHNATION
- Mark Saunders — former Toronto police chief
News of the appointments come the same day U.S. biotech firm Moderna reported it would have as many as 125 million doses available by the end of March, including 15 to 25 million doses available for non-U.S. countries.
Moderna said its messenger RNA vaccine is showing signs of producing lasting immunity to COVID-19 and that Canada — the first country to sign a deal to buy its vaccine — will get doses from the first batches.
At least 20 million doses are guaranteed for Canadians, and Ottawa has said the country expects to receive two million doses in its first deliveries.
Moderna says new data from its first small clinical trial shows patients still showed signs of good immunity three months after receiving their second dose of the vaccine.
The firm is among several vaccine makers whose initial clinical results show their vaccines are safe and effective at creating antibodies, but since the vaccines are so new there has not been enough time to know how long those antibodies will last.
Elsewhere on Friday, Bahrain became the second nation in the world to grant an emergency-use authorization for the vaccine being made by Pfizer and BioNTech.
— With files from The Associated Press and Mia Ranson of The Canadian Press
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