U of T teams to track demographics of COVID-19
Donald “Mad Scientist” Trump’s promise of an imminent COVID-19 vaccine may be as flawed as his hope that ingesting bleach is a viable antidote. But thousands of real scientists around the world are chasing cures, treatments, vaccines, testing regimens and everything to do with detecting, predicting, mapping and containing coronavirus.
A recent Star story on scientists pushing to get a vaccine by the end of the year suggests there are at least 90 such projects “speeding ahead around the world in desperate efforts to slow the pandemic.”
Now, add 31 project teams at the University of Toronto to this coterie of global lab coats — each armed with university and private funds that are to fuel research aimed at exposing bit by bit, how the virus works, spreads, can be contained — and why it affects some populations more than others.
The U of T scientists are recipients of a Toronto COVID-19 Action Fund grant — a total of $8.4 million — awarded and announced a mere 30 days after the fund was created and 338 applicants submitted ideas.
“The consequences of COVID-19 is severe for society, so the faster we can find our way out of this, the better it is for everybody,” said Vivek Goel, Uof T’s vice-president of research and innovation.
The world is faced with a new virus, there is no immunity in the population, no vaccine or drugs to treat it and the only viable defence are public health measures like social distancing that have huge economic and social consequences.
Meanwhile, young people seem impervious to its harm, then not. The aged are definitely at risk but then a centenarian survives its grip. Animals are safe, but maybe not. And all the time, the poor and marginalized — frequently, predictably people of colour — die at rates twice as high as white folks.
The conditions are a call to arms that didn’t have to be sounded in the scientific community, really. Most other scientific projects are now stalled behind the giant global lockdown, so everyone might as well jump on the coronavirus research train.
“COVID-19 presents an array of unprecedented global problems that require urgent attention and expertise from experts in a wide variety of disciplines — from medical specialists and public health researchers to economists, social scientists and mathematicians,” Goel said.
The breadth of projects approved by the University of Toronto reflects the massive task ahead for a world forced to examine a phenomenon that requires a telescope as well as a microscope. Social conditions left far in the distance — like why people of colour and marginalized groups are dying at rates twice that of white neighbours — must be pulled into the social scientist’s lab, along with the tracking of the virus’ genome.
Dr. Upton Allen and his team is a good example. Using data from SARS as a base comparison, Allen’s team will measure the differing types of immune responses at different stages of the illness, from early infection to post recovery, and across different age groups.
“What we do believe is the immune system responds in different ways, perhaps for young children and the elderly. By better understanding how it behaves, this provides insights into why some people respond with mild symptoms while others are hit hard. This helps determine what treatment will be beneficial,” Allen said. While our immune system builds a wall of defence during the illness, the symptoms of feeling unwell suggest that there are “holes in the immune defence,” Allen explained. “Perhaps one should target a specific treatment to try and fix those defects, to fix weak spots in the immune system. “We call them immune modulators. They help to dial down the damage,” said Allen, head of infectious diseases at Sick Kids and professor of pediatrics at U of T.
Doctors currently have two ways to treat coronavirus patients — either with antiviral agents or immunal modulators. “The question is, can we apply them to COVID-19? In studying the immune system, we will get a better understanding of how ready the immune systems of patients to receive vaccines, and receive them safely and mount an effective protection response. This is important information,” he said.
But Allen is not stopping there, at the pure science. His team will ensure his research includes some social science, including a sufficient number of African Canadians to provide representative results that allows them to draw conclusions about the COVID impact on that demographic.
“We are very passionate about getting this info. The hospital and university are extremely supportive of this pursuit. We will partner with Carl James from York University and Adoma Patterson of the Jamaican Canadian Association to set up opportunity to ID as many Blacks who have had COVID to get an appropriate number” for the study.
The projects are supposed to have the potential to deliver positive impacts within a year. For example:
Prof. Janet Smylie, Dalla Lana School of Public Health, will examine the rapid implementation of a shared COVID-19 tracking and response platform for First Nations, Inuit and Métis populations.
Uof T Mississauga anthropologist and lecturer Madeleine Mant is looking at COVID-19 risk in young adults.
Prof. Scott Schieman, chair of the department of sociology, leads a project to explore the impacts of COVID-19 on the quality of work and economic life in Canada.
Then, there is this project from Jordan Feld from the faculty of medicine and the University Health Network: Interferon lambda for immediate antiviral therapy at diagnosis: a phase II randomized, open-label, multicentre trial to evaluate the effect of peginterferon lambda for the treatment of COVID-19.
Yeah. If that doesn’t get corona, nothing will.