Five years after the start of the pandemic, experts from the MUHC, the Montreal Children’s Hospital and The Institute share their significant experiences and lessons learned. Through their testimonies, scientific advances and innovative efforts, they tell us how they have risen to the challenges of treating the sick, protecting the most vulnerable and fighting COVID-19. Discover an overview of their crucial contributions in this
unprecedented fight. 

At the heart of the action during the COVID-19 pandemic

In the spring of 2020, Dr. Lucie Opartny, then Assistant Deputy Minister at the MSSS, quickly set up the COVID-19 Clinical Steering Committee to help hospitals prepare effectively for the pandemic. Since January 2023, she has been President and Executive Director of the MUHC.

Caring for the most seriously affected 

A former intensivist, Dr. Jason Shahin has vivid memories of that period when caregivers, despite their fear, showed up every day at the intensive care unit to care for the sickest patients. Now director of intensive care at the MUHC, Dr. Shahin also mentions that ECMO treatment, an advanced respiratory support method, has proven to be a crucial tool in the fight to save severely ill and life-threatening COVID-19 patients.  

Beauty and the Beast: The Duality of the Pandemic 

For infectious disease specialist Dr. Don Vinh, the pandemic can be summed up as a duality that he describes as Beauty and the Beast. “Beauty” symbolizes the remarkable advances in the scientific field. “The Beast,” on the other hand, embodies the challenges of the health crisis, including that of educating the population with the need to explain health measures and fight against
disinformation. 

Rapid response: The MUHC’s technical services in the face of the pandemic 

At the height of the pandemic, the MUHC Technical Services team, led by Pierre-Marc Legris, converted more than 200 rooms to negative pressure, set up screening and vaccination clinics to protect employees, but also to serve the community. Housekeeping has been stepped up, with increased frequency and rigorous disinfection of spaces to maintain high standards of hygiene. 

Understanding COVID-19 in children 

Drs. Earl Rubin, Jesse Papenburg and Marie-Astrid Lefebvre are pediatric infectious disease specialists at the Montreal Children’s Hospital (MCH) and have been treating children with COVID-19. They can also discuss the impact the pandemic had on other illnesses in children. 

As the person responsible for Infection Prevention and Control at the MCH, Dr. Lefebvre was also at the forefront of implementing health measures in a hospital during a pandemic 

Management of a COVID-19 unit: reorganization and patient care 

Dr. Mylène Dandavino, Head of the Medical Inpatient Services at the MCH, was responsible for managing the hospitalization unit that received COVID-19 patients at the MCH. She also took care of reassigning doctors when the pandemic broke out.  

Adults treated in a pediatric hospital 

Under the supervision of Dr. Tanya Di Genova, Pediatric Intensivist and now Associate Director of Professional Services, the MCH took in adult patients to relieve the Royal Victoria Hospital and the Montreal General Hospital, whose beds were all occupied. Thus, 13 critically ill adults aged 27 to 75 were treated by MCH intensivists, while nine others were treated by general pediatricians. 

In search of cures: The Institute leads several clinical drug trials 

From the start of the pandemic, Drs. Todd Lee and Emily McDonald have done remarkable work to offer clinical trials to non-hospitalized patients with COVID-19. As of March 2020, as access to hospitals was restricted, the two experts developed innovative methods to conduct “contactless” clinical trials with patients self-isolating at home. They led the first randomized controlled outpatient trial in Canada for COVID-19 in which a patient was enrolled. Together with other colleagues from the Institute and other Canadian and American institutions, they tested hydroxychloroquine, ciclesonide and fluvoxamine, publishing their results in major medical journals. They also evaluated the cost and effectiveness of different outpatient treatments.  

Understanding severe cases 

Dr. Don Vinh has been working with a group of international researchers to understand why some people are more vulnerable to COVID-19. They have found that about 15 per cent of patients whose lives are threatened by COVID-19 have one thing in common: a defect in the activity of type I interferons (IFNs), molecules of the immune system that normally have powerful antiviral activity. Dr. Vinh has also conducted a study to determine the factors that put an elderly person at risk of developing severe COVID-19 symptoms and medical complications that can lead to life-threatening illness. 

Screening and contact tracing: developing strategies to limit the spread of the disease 

Jonathon Campbell led studies that looked at the effectiveness and costs of strategies for screening and controlling the transmission of the virus among at-risk groups. Along with other colleagues from The Institute, he also studied the effectiveness of saliva tests compared to nasopharyngeal swabs. Dr. Cédric Yansouni and his colleagues have identified interventions to significantly improve the accuracy of rapid SARS-CoV-2 antigen detection tests by untrained individuals, and have contributed to the evaluation of these tests for approval for self-testing in Canada. Dr. Abhinav Sharma, for his part, worked on digital contact tracing applications and digital screening strategies, establishing recommendations to promote their adoption and the protection of privacy.  

Vulnerable populations and vaccine efficacy 

Several researchers have evaluated the effectiveness of vaccines in certain vulnerable populations, such as Dr. Rita Suri (for dialysis patients), Dr. Sasha Bernatsky (for people suffering from immune-mediated inflammatory diseases (IMID) such as rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease, psoriasis) and Dr. Cecilia Costiniuk (for people living with HIV) and Dr. Don Vinh (for the frail elderly living in CHSLDs, and for (non-HIV) immunocompromised patients).