When COVID-19 emerged in March 2020, Canada’s health-care system was confronted with a unique challenge.

As emergency rooms swelled with patients, there was intense pressure to come up with a vaccine to protect people and reduce the strain on hospitals.

Canada’s vaccine research and development capacity was lagging. “COVID-19 exposed the fact that we had no capacity to manufacture a vaccine in-house,” says Dr. Peter Pelka, a professor in the department of microbiology at the University of Manitoba. “It was immediately recognized [that]… we couldn’t prioritize our own citizens.”

Ultimately, the federal government purchased vaccines from manufacturers located outside of Canada. Without domestic capacity to quickly create vaccines, valuable time had been lost. Hospitals were overwhelmed, stretching resources and staff beyond their limits.

It was clear Canada needed to ramp up its capacity to produce its own vaccines.

The Solution

Fast forward to 2025, and scientists from across the Prairies have mobilized with a sole focus on being ready to produce vaccines when needed.

The project, led by Pelka, is a partnership between UM and the Universities of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Calgary to conduct world-leading vaccine and biomanufacturing research.

To enable that, the federal government made a historic $57-million investment, announced in May 2024, to build two innovative facilities at UM. These state-of-the-art labs – one on the Bannatyne campus and the other on the Fort Garry campus – will play a key role in addressing future pandemic threats in Canada and around the world.

“That will give us the platform we need for quick vaccine developments,” explains Pelka. “The goal would be to develop new viral vector vaccines quickly, hopefully in 100 days or less. Being part of this Prairie Hub will allow us to do research, and to manufacture vaccines in-house. The big thing is we will be able to develop vaccines quickly and safely.”

Not only that, but the next-generation vaccines produced at the UM labs will be delivered in a more effective manner.

“Unlike the older vaccines, new vaccines won’t require cold storage,” Pelka says. “They will be administered orally or nasally, with no needles required and at a much lower cost to manufacture. Our research is focused on exploring innovative technologies to produce safe and effective vaccines for diverse populations right here at home.”

The Impact

The major impact of the new research partnership and the facilities at UM will be that should another pandemic arise, response time will be greatly reduced, with the ability to create and produce made-in-Canada vaccines for Canadians who want them.

There will be economic benefits that come with the new facility as well, says Pelka.

“Construction will create jobs initially. Then, once the facilities are up and running, there will be lots of growth opportunities in Manitoba – new jobs in research and manufacturing, as well as training for the next generation of innovators.”

In essence, being a central part of viral research and vaccine development will add a new dimension to Manitoba’s health-care system and economy. 

Dr. Jason Kindrachuk, associate professor of medical microbiology and infectious diseases

Dr. Jason Kindrachuk, UM Canada Research Chair in the molecular pathogenesis of emerging viruses, associate professor of medical microbiology and infectious diseases, researcher with the Children’s Hospital Research Institute of Manitoba and a lead member of the Prairie Hub, says the world-leading research and facilities will take vaccine development and delivery to a new level.

“These new, cutting-edge facilities will provide a unique opportunity for rapid identification of new emerging public health threats and inform the design and development of new therapeutics, diagnostics and vaccines to increase epidemic and pandemic preparedness and response in Manitoba,” says Kindrachuk.

“Beyond the scientific advances, the facilities will make Manitoba more competitive in attracting and retaining top research talent to study and work here.”

“Lessons have been learned,” Pelka says. “Research is going well. We’re entering an exciting time for the university and country. If another pandemic happens, we’ll be ready to make a vaccine quickly and stop it as soon as we can. And the university, along with its partners, will play a big role in making that happen.”

For nearly 150 years, the University of Manitoba has transformed lives through groundbreaking research and homegrown innovation. We push the boundaries of knowledge and do the hard work here in Manitoba to move our community and the world forward. Our researchers tackle society’s most pressing challenges, from health care and sustainability to Arctic accessibility and security, delivering solutions that make a real impact. With a spirit of determination and discovery, we are shaping a better future for our province and beyond.

Read The Free Press story here. 

The medical director at Health Sciences Centre Children’s Hospital emergency department in Winnipeg says there’s an increase in cases of respiratory illnesses in kids showing up in the ER.

“Rhinovirus, COVID-19, respiratory syncytial virus [RSV], influenza — all the respiratory viruses — are really gathering steam,” said Dr. Karen Gripp, a pediatric emergency physician and associate professor at the University of Manitoba.

Read here

Because of physical-distancing requirements, many schools repurposed gymnasiums into needed classroom space, forcing phys-ed teachers to take kids outside.

And in addition to reaping the benefits of getting fresh air at a time when the stuff indoors was laden with COVID-19 health concerns, educators began to question the point of requiring young students to change into workout gear, something that eats into exercise time.

Read here

Last week, the World Health Organization classified EG.5 as a variant of interest, but said it does not seem to pose more of a threat to public health than other variants.

According to virologist Jason Kindrachuk, this strain is an Omicron subvariant that doesn’t deviate much from what we’ve already seen.

Read here

During the peak of the pandemic, and mid-lockdown, many people reported they felt their days dragged on, inducing fatigue and making some tasks almost unbearable during “COVID time.”

An interdisciplinary team of researchers studied this effect of the COVID-19 pandemic, called Blursday, to understand how our perception of time is malleable and influenced by many factors. Blursday was the altered sense of time and difficulty in determining the day of the week during the lockdown.

Dr. Fuat Balci, a UM biologist and part of the research team, notes: “A new lingo emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic to capture the altered psychological state under the extraordinary conditions imposed by the pandemic such as the lockdown and social isolation, including doomscrolling and Blursday.”

Dr. Fuat Balci

The researchers had volunteers answer a questionnaire and perform 15 behavioural tasks, such as estimating how long they had been logged on to the study’s website. They were also asked to guess if a stated time interval was shorter or longer than they experienced to test how the pandemic affected temporal awareness.

Balci says: “We found that more isolated the participants felt during the pandemic, the slower time seemed to pass, probably mediated by boredom and more attention paid to time. Also, the more isolated the participants felt, the more distant in time past and future events seemed to be.”

A similar effect is experienced while waiting in line at Starbucks, for example.

“Whenever a situation causes you to pay more attention to time, it will have a similar effect,” Balci explains. “This is why magazines are made available in doctors’ waiting rooms. And don’t watch your egg boil because it will seem to take longer.”

The pandemic lockdown created this time effect because sleep patterns, level of physical activity and daily routines changed during the lockdown along with increases in depression and anxiety.

Balci says: “These vast changes were experienced by virtually the entire world population. We were already investigating how these factors affected our sense of time and in a sense the lockdown introduced a natural experiment to address the same research questions that we used to study in the lab.”

He adds: “From earlier research, we know that cognitive, affective and physiological factors influence our sense of time and these factors were largely affected during the lockdown. Time perception is malleable given that it is the pure product of our brain with no objective reference in the external world, unlike vision for which we have a dedicated sensory system that processes external stimuli.”

The research team also found there was an age effect, in that older individuals rated their subjective distances to the future shorter (their future appeared closer to them) but their past subjective distances were similar to younger participants.

Balci says: “The effect of aging on subjective time is a contemporary research topic particularly given the anecdotal evidence that time passes faster as we age. But in the lab setting, we see the effect of age on time perception particularly when the cognitive system is taxed, like making a time judgment when trying to remember a list of words or when the attention is divided between different tasks.”

He concludes: “Slowed sense of time does not feel good; it would be nice if pleasurable events felt longer. Waiting in your apartment for the pandemic/lockdown to end so that you can again enjoy what a normal life used to offer is certainly not one of those activities. When you add the uncertainty and anxiety into this picture, it certainly gets even worse.”

The team of which Balci was part consisted of scientists from disciplines including science, engineering, psychology and medicine, and from countries including France, Japan, India, Argentina, England, and Canada. The results of the truly international and interdisciplinary Blursday study were published in the journal Nature: Human Behavior.

“We think children were kind of at a disadvantage from the start because of the vaccines being rolled out a bit later for them,” said Catherine Campos, who is entering her second year of the bachelor of respiratory therapy program at the College of Rehabilitation Sciences.

Campos and Samantha Prokopich, a second-year student in the Interdisciplinary Health Program, Rady Faculty of Health Sciences, worked this summer with Dr. Diana Sanchez-Ramirez, a researcher and assistant professor of respiratory therapy, on two projects looking into long COVID in children.

Long COVID is a condition that affects people beyond their initial COVID-19 infection. The most common symptoms of long COVID are fatigue, shortness of breath, muscle pain and difficulty concentrating.

The primary work was a systematic review of persistent long COVID effects on lung function, cardiorespiratory symptoms and fatigue in children and teenagers. The study identified 17 relevant articles published in several medical journals.

“We focused on the persistent effects of COVID after three months of their initial diagnosis. We looked at things like lung imaging, their function, cardiorespiratory symptoms, fatigue and their ability to return to school,” Campos said.

“With children, it could affect their respiratory system along with other organ systems, such as cardiovascular and neurological.”

She also noted that children are not as likely as adults to go to follow-up appointments following the acute phase of COVID.

“The research on children and adolescents is scarce, a lot of people are unsure if long COVID is something they are experiencing,” she said.

The second project Campos and Prokopich are involved in is a survey on the prevalence of long COVID in Manitoba. The survey is open to any Manitobans who wish to participate.

“The data are coming from health practitioners, respiratory therapists, all within health institutions. We’re trying to figure out if people are actually going to get help for long COVID or if it’s one of those things where they say, ‘I’ll just work through it and see what happens,’” Prokopich said.

The students both received an Undergraduate Research Award from the University of Manitoba for this summer research work. The award allows recipients to choose a professor to pair with whose work aligns with their interests.

“It just so happened that we were both really interested in (Sanchez-Ramirez’s) lab and COVID research,” Prokopich said.

“I have family who have kids that are currently going to middle schools and elementary schools, so having a chance to see how COVID is affecting people close to me was a really exciting opportunity.”

The systematic review took place over 16 weeks, starting in May and concluding in August. The survey will continue into the fall.

“We are hoping that this study, along with filling out the survey, helps people to openly discuss and identify symptoms that may be long COVID,” Campos said.

But what about large corporations such as Wal-Mart, BMO, or Exxon? What has COVID done to them?

Wenlong Yuan is the Stu Clark Chair in Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the UM Asper School of Business. His current research includes the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic for international business strategy and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

“Every kind of firm was affected by COVID,” he says, “so on the macro level we can see a very broad impact of the pandemic. Smaller businesses were hit worse than larger companies, mostly because they had fewer employees, and they couldn’t operate when even a few were sick. But nevertheless, larger businesses felt the effects too.”

Yuan says that previous to COVID, global markets were linked to one another and increases in one sector usually meant a parallel increase in another, like oil and tech stocks varying together.

But COVID created a situation where decoupling emerged, so that the economies of traditionally linked countries began doing their own thing.

“The decoupling of China and the USA, for example, should have resulted in more manufacturing jobs coming back from overseas, but that did not occur. If you restrict imports from one country, manufacturing will move to another country, such as when China moves its manufacturing to other parts of Asia so as to avoid the USA.”

Another aspect of business affected by COVID-19 is the notion of “office space.” Yuan notes that even before the pandemic hit, many companies were finding that their large office towers and corporate headquarters were only partially full. That was not because of a lack of employees but because many were already working remotely or were offsite making customer or client visits.

“Some companies were under pressure from their head office to reduce costs, and internal surveys found that one third to one quarter of offices were already underused,” he says. “And in-house cafeterias were often empty because staff were eating bag lunches or going out to restaurants, so it was obvious much of the office space was not needed.”

“Designated office spaces were not essential,” he adds. “Even the CEOs of some companies did not require physical offices.”

Yuan notes that companies which shifted to a “hybrid” arrangement where employees were in a physical office a few days a week made much more sense.

“And employees usually prefer that and enjoy the more free work and lifestyle,” he says. “This is much like what we are seeing at UM today, and will likely become the norm everywhere in a few years.”

He suggests that jobs such as cashiers and office support will disappear, and this is already evident at some businesses such as Costco, Wal-Mart and other retail stores.

But what to do with all that empty office space?

Yuan observes that over the past five years, ecommerce had begun to be more common. Online businesses sprang up, from virtual consultants and time managers to things like “ghost kitchens” that don’t have physical restaurants with chairs and tables but operate only with pickup or delivery.

“Businesses will look very different in the future,” Yuan explains. “Buildings will not house offices with employees at desks but will be maintained mostly as warehouses and storage to supplement online activity.”

Work could look very different as well. Yuan envisions “hybrid entrepreneurs” who will have more than one job, perhaps starting as a “side hustle” but becoming more established as time goes on.

“Working from home allows much more freedom,” he says, “but we really don’t know what will happen; it’s hard to predict the future trends. The new reality allows experimentation, where an entrepreneur can come up with an idea or product and test it without the expense of renting space and setting up a storefront.”

Yuan says the most important ability to have as a business operator or entrepreneur is resilience.

“We’re going through many changes already, and it’s crucial that we are able to deal with uncertainty. Not just in business, but in all aspects of our lives.”

He is concerned that students may have lost contact with their networks of friends and colleagues during the pandemic. University students in particular may have been stuck in their apartments and been very isolated not only from other students but from any supports they may have needed.

“In general, we have not done very well in teaching young people how to be resilient,” Yuan notes. “I’m a bit worried about the new cohort of students, who have spent a lot of their time in high school doing mostly distance learning. Some of their necessary learning skills might not have been acquired at the right level.”

“It may be that professors will have to adjust their teaching styles to accommodate students who don’t have the ability to learn well in a classroom environment.”

Yuan adds: “I don’t have a crystal ball. We’ll see how the next few years progress.”

The study builds off of the Translating Emergency Knowledge for Kids (TREKK) program, for which UM is the host institution. Through its website and app, TREKK provides parents and health-care providers from across the country with evidence-based information and resources on more than 50 topics related to children. 

“Receiving this funding is really exciting,” said Dr. Terry Klassen, professor of pediatrics and child health at the Max Rady College of Medicine, director of TREKK and principal investigator of the study. “The funding allows our team to put together evidence, identify the latest research and put it in a format that health-care providers can access and use. I’m delighted that we can help improve the health outcomes of children and families in this country.”

The study will look at 10 conditions related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Researchers will update resources for conditions like asthma, bronchiolitis and croup. The research team will also add new topics on conditions like pneumonia to the TREKK database.

“I think the pandemic has changed things and made certain conditions more common,” said Klassen, UM Canada Research Chair in clinical trials, CEO of the Children’s Hospital Research institute of Manitoba (CHRIM) and scientific director of the George & Fay Yee Centre for Healthcare Innovation. “So with this changing dynamic, and what health-care providers are seeing in the emergency departments, it’s important they have the resources that best meets their needs.”

To reflect the needs of emergency departments, the research team will survey health-care professionals to see what additional topics should be added to TREKK’s resources. The researchers will also ask parents and youths about what information is important for emergency health-care providers to know.

The researchers will then test the usability of the resources they create and make changes as needed.

Dr. Veronica Lai

“These days we can Google basically anything, but that doesn’t assure the accuracy of the content and whether it’s evidence based,” said Dr. Veronica Lai, a UM postdoctoral fellow at CHRIM, and a co-investigator on the study. “At the end of the day, we hope that the resources we develop are going to be used by someone who needs the information, so we need to hear from them, and use their feedback so we can improve the resources.”

Klassen said they’ve found that some emergency department health-care providers experience a lot of anxiety when dealing with kids because they don’t treat them often and are used to seeing adult patients. He said it’s helpful and empowering for them to be able to quickly find evidence-based information on TREKK’s website or app.

“This is about improving the outcomes of children when they visit an emergency department,” Klassen said. “We want any child, anywhere, to have the best care possible. TREKK’s resources provide doctors, nurses and respiratory therapists with information to feel more confident when dealing with a child.”

Dr. Kathleen Decker,  associate professor of community health sciences, Max Rady College of Medicine, and a senior scientist and lead of the health services research platform at CancerCare Manitoba Research Institute, said the pandemic has had an unprecedented impact on cancer control in the province – from screening and diagnosis to treatment and survival.

Decker, the study’s principal investigator, said some impacts of the pandemic included changes to the cancer screening programs, shifts from in-person to virtual care for some patients, changes to chemotherapy and radiotherapy schedules and the prioritization of critical cancer surgeries.

“We need to measure the actual impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on cancer care in Manitoba using real-world data, and that’s what we want to do with this study,” Decker said.

The research will examine the impact of the pandemic on breast, cervical and colorectal cancer screening throughout the pandemic. It will also look at the impact on diagnostic tests for breast, cervical and colorectal cancer, and the impact on cancer incidence and changes in the stage at which a person is diagnosed with cancer.

As well, the study will evaluate the impact of the pandemic on treatment rates and time to first treatment. The project will look at the time saved for patients who had virtual care and didn’t have to travel to appointments. It will also evaluate the impact of the pandemic on overall survival.

“The goal of the study is to really understand how the pandemic impacted cancer care because this isn’t going to be the last time the cancer care system is impacted by big changes and we don’t want to be vulnerable in the future,” Decker said. “We want to learn from this so we can make our system better and more resilient, so that if this happens again, or even if there are other disruptions to the system – like flooding or equipment failures or supply chain issues – we can manage it better.”

Dr. Pamela Hebbard

Dr. Pamela Hebbard, assistant professor of surgery, Max Rady College of Medicine, and head of surgical oncology at CancerCare Manitoba, said that the disruptions in health-care services could mean there are people who have missed or delayed cancer diagnoses. She said there are some unanswered questions they want to answer with this research.

“We know that the patients who came through the door had received care, but one of the lingering questions is – are we missing patients?” said Hebbard, a collaborator on the study. “Are patients sitting at home afraid to get health-care services and now going to have more advanced cancers? We’re looking to see if there’s a deficit, and if we don’t see them, where did they go? Some patients may have died of COVID. Just being able to explain that and then plan the cancer control, I think it’s really important.”

Initial funding for the study came from Research Manitoba and the CancerCare Manitoba Foundation.

As Canada tackles its seventh wave, the Coronavirus Variants Rapid Response Network (CoVaRR-Net), a collaboration of researchers across Canada including at UM who are assisting the Government of Canada, is undertaking 15 new research projects focused on better understanding Omicron subvariants and future variants and finding solutions to curb them thanks to $6.9 million in newly announced funding.

Jason Kindrachuk

Deanna Santer

Two University of Manitoba researchers, Jason Kindrachuk and Deanna Santer, are lending their expertise to two different CoVaRR-Net projects.

Jason Kindrachuk, Canada Research Chair in the molecular pathogenesis of emerging viruses at the University of Manitoba, is co-leading one of the new projects. This project—”Host-Pathogen Interactions”—will provide better understanding of how SARS-CoV-2 and its variants can affect wild, captive, and domesticated animals throughout Canada. It is important to understand this as animals can act as reservoirs for certain diseases, allowing viruses to “spillover” into human populations with dire consequences.

As such, this work will provide critical information for surveillance, efforts to reduce the public health risk, and strategies to mitigate the impact of SARS-CoV-2 in animal and human populations.

Kindrachuk says: “It’s estimated that up to 60 per cent of known infectious diseases are zoonotic in origin – pathogens that have jumped from animals to humans. It is critical for us to not only consider the impacts of emerging zoonotic viruses, such as SARS-CoV-2, on public health and global economies but also their potential effects on food security, agriculture, and wildlife conservation efforts.”

Deanna Santer, the GlaxoSmithKline Endowed Research Chair in Immunobiology of Infectious Diseases at the University of Manitoba, is a Deputy member for another CoVaRR-Net project, “Antiviral Strategies and Antiviral Therapeutics.”

This project aims to understand if and how antiviral drugs such as Remdesivir and Paxlovid, when used alone, could be rendered ineffective by this rapidly mutating virus. This project will provide critical information on the potential for Omicron variants to resist current antiviral treatments and how combination antiviral therapies can be used as alternatives to monotherapy to improve treatment.

Santer notes: “This new project brings together experts across Canada to understand how SARS-CoV-2 escapes current antiviral treatments and to test combining very specific and more broad, immune boosting treatments. We need to expand our treatment ‘toolbox’ to ensure we can effectively stop whichever virus variant is currently circulating.”

In Canada, it’s estimated that over 80 per cent of current infections are due to the BA.5 Omicron subvariant, new to Canada this spring. Yet, it remains unclear which variant(s) Canadians will keep facing in the coming months.

“Despite all the research and health measures deployed since the beginning of the pandemic, we are still dealing with a virus that could soon equal or surpass measles as one of the world’s most infectious viral agents and will continue to evolve until new solutions are developed to stop it,” says Dr. Marc-André Langlois, CoVaRR-Net’s Executive Director and professor of molecular virology and intrinsic immunity at the University of Ottawa.

He adds: “In order to reduce the virus’s spread, we must continue studying different aspects of variants to discover their vulnerabilities. The research projects in which CoVaRR-Net is investing have been carefully selected to answer some key questions to exploit these vulnerabilities and support public health officials in tackling the pandemic.”