Thwarted by N.L. travel restrictions, man drops out of COVID-19 vaccine trial in order to visit – CBC
Aug 08, 2021
Newfoundland and Labrador’s travel restrictions bar people participating in clinical trials for COVID-19 vaccines, with one man saying he decided to drop out of a trial in order to visit his summer home on the island’s east coast.
Kevin Weiss of Toronto signed up in March for a clinical trial on Quebec’s Medicago vaccine, half out of “altruism,” he said, to advance vaccine science — and also to potentially get inoculated at a time when it was unclear when his demographic might be protected under a Health Canada-approved shot.
Weiss got both shots of Medicago, a vaccine with clinical trials currently in Phase 3 across North America, Latin America and Europe, after the drugmaker said its Phase 2 trial showed promising results in battling the coronavirus.
But as the months marched on toward his family’s annual trip to Bell Island — a ritual he said has been going on for years, albeit interrupted in 2020 by the pandemic — Weiss began to worry that without an approved shot, he might run into trouble.
