Ontario CANVAS-COVID
Unity Health Toronto
Unity Health Toronto, comprised of Providence Healthcare, St. Joseph’s Health Centre and St. Michael’s Hospital, works to advance the health of everyone in our urban communities and beyond. Our health network serves patients, residents and clients across the full spectrum of care, spanning primary care, secondary community care, tertiary and quaternary care services to post-acute through rehabilitation, palliative care and long-term care, while investing in world-class research and education.
Study Team
Co-Investigator
Dr. Matthew P. Muller, MD PhD FRCPC
Clinician-investigator, St. Michael’s Hospital, Unity Health Toronto
Investigator, Keenan Research Centre for Biomedical Science
Medical Director of Infection Prevention and Control and Infectious Diseases Consultant, Unity Health Toronto
Associate Professor, Department of Medicine, University of Toronto
Dr. Muller as an infectious disease physician and hospital epidemiologist at Unity Health Toronto and an Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Toronto. Dr. Muller chairs the Ontario Provincial Infectious Diseases Advisory Committee on Infection Prevention and Control (PIDAC). Dr. Muller’s research focusing on the epidemiology and prevention of healthcare associated infections. Dr. Muller has been the St. Michael’s Hospital principle investigator for the Canadian National Vaccine Safety (CANVAS) Network for several years and is the Ontario lead for CANVAS-COVID.
Co-Investigator
Dr. Allison Mcgeer, MsC MD FRCPC
Microbiologist and Infectious Disease Consultant, Mount Sinai Hospital
Senior Clinician Scientist at the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute of the Sinai Health System
Professor, Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology, Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto
Dr. McGeeris a Professor in the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology and at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto. She is the principal investigator of the Toronto Invasive Bacterial Diseases Network, a collaborative surveillance network that performs surveillance for serious bacterial and viral diseases, including COVID19, in south central Ontario. Dr. McGeer has years of experience leading CANVAS- Toronto Site.
Dr. McGeer currently serves as an external expert to the influenza working group of Canada’s National Advisory Committee on Immunization and is a meeting of Canada’s COVID19 Immunity Task Force Leadership Group. She was the lead for the hospital investigation of SARS-CoV-1 in Ontario in 2003, investigated the first outbreak of MERS in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 2013, and worked for the World Health Organization as the infection prevention and control focal point in Liberia during the 2014/15 West African Ebola Outbreak
Dr. McGeer major research interests are in the prevention of infection in hospitals and nursing homes, the use of surveillance to advance the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of infectious diseases, and emerging infectious diseases including antimicrobial resistance.
Site Coordinator
Saman Khan MBBS MPH
Ontario Site Coordinator
Saman has been working at Sinai Health Systems since 2007 in The Department of Microbiology, Toronto Invasive Bacterial Disease Network (TIBDN) and Infectious Disease Research Unit (IDRU). Saman has worked on various research projects on population-based surveillance for serious bacterial and viral infections and conducted several vaccine safety & efficacy studies at multiple TIBDN hospitals throughout GTA and surrounding areas.
She is the CANVAS COVID-19 research coordinator at Ontario site. She is an International Medical Graduate and obtained her MPH from University of Waterloo.
