The Canadian government has almost doubled its financial backing of a legion of researchers now being called on to develop a counterattack against a series of social, clinical and public health woes triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic.

What was initial announced as a $27 million grant package in the first week of March, has since grown to a $51 million promise to support 96 projects that will shore up clinical and public health responses, develop and evaluate diagnostic tools as well as fashion ways to tackle misinformation, stigma and fear both here and abroad.

Canadian scientists at universities and research hospitals from coast-to-coast, including York University and the University Health Network in Toronto, have been given the go ahead by the grants administrator, the Canadian Institute of Health Research (CIHR).

York University assistant professor Aaida Mamuji is one researcher delving into the far-reaching social tentacles of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Mamuji is looking at destigmatizing Chinese communities in the face of the crisis and actions to address social vulnerability in Toronto and Nairobi, Kenya.

“It’s not only a health emergency,” said Mamuji. “Chinese people have been facing bullying at school, harassment in their place of business and general prejudice,” she said.

“Stigma actually exacerbates the spread of infectious disease,” she said. “If people are stigmatized, they may not seek medical attention.”

The Chinese community faced similar fallout during SARS, she said.

Phase one is understanding the impact and how people of Chinese background are coping with the backlash linked to the crisis in Toronto and Nairobi. The second phase, of the two-year project, is collaborating with emergency management and public health officials to share what they have learned and to work collaboratively to launch a destigmatization campaign.

Her York University colleague, professor Harris Ali, is looking at how social media is playing a central role in the creation and spread of misinformation about COVID-19 by confusing public understanding, fostering racism and xenophobia, and affecting the capacity of public health officials to communicate scientific facts.

“There is recognition from the World Health Organization (WHO) that there is a priority to look at social impacts,” she said. “There will be a forum set up to have all the researchers connect about our respective work.”

She said a lot of the information is perishable and needs to be captured immediately in order to inform our preparedness for future crisis.

Unity Health Toronto, a Catholic hospital network, which includes St. Michael’s will receive about $4.4 million to fund a host of projects over two years, including looking at technology to strengthen mortality surveillance and therapeutic development.

The University Health Network has already repurposed teams to focus exclusively on its seven projects including clinical research and therapies for recovering patients, said Dr. Brad Wouters, head of science and research at UHN.

“We have no effective therapies at the moment,” Wouters said, adding that the hospital is also part of the WHO trials. The other major area is drug trials that could prevent infection. Those drugs would be developed for health-care workers.

Wouters says the government grants are a good start but not nearly enough.

“We need way more money,” he said. “I hope the federal government is going to come through with more supports on the clinical research side.”

The UHN foundations have been raising money to augment government supports.

The call for applicants went out Feb. 10. The CIHR received 227 research proposals that were peer-reviewed. A priority was placed on acute responses to contain the virus, but Adrian Mota, CIHR’s associate vice-president of research said there were a number of viable projects left on the table, which spurred the investment of additional dollars.

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He said just over half of the projects were focused on diagnostics, research trials and clinical initiatives, while the balance (accounting for about 30 per cent of the funds allocated) will go toward social projects such as public health response, social media and addressing misinformation about the outbreak.

“We did this incredible quickly,” he said. “It normally takes CIHR 12-18 months to run something like this and we did it in three to five weeks. part of the impetus was getting people going right away.”

Mota said the World Health Organization (WHO) was keen on Canada taking a leadership role on the social file, because “understanding these issues are important to mitigating the spread of the disease and understanding how we can apply effective intervention.

”We’re talking about stigma and racism,” he said, adding that mental health is also top of file because it’s important to hone in on the impact on people who are isolated under self-quarantine.