Further to our previous communication regarding bringing human participant face-to-face research safely back online, we have updated our human participant face-to-face documents with new information about vulnerable populations. These updates include:
- Research involving populations at higher risk of negative outcomes (described as ‘vulnerable populations’ by the Public Health Agency of Canada) is only being considered for human face-to-face research activities when there is compelling evidence to do so.
- Children (defined by Public Health Ontario as <19 years ) who contract COVID-19 are considered no more vulnerable than adults (<60 years) in the COVID-19 context.
- Individuals who have received the full COVID-19 vaccine are not considered high risk/vulnerable in this context.
- Consideration of exceptional cases to work with higher risk populations can be requested within an RMP, provided there are effective protection measures to reduce risk to these individuals (e.g., full COVID-19 vaccination).
The updated documents can be found on the Office of Research COVID information website:
- Frameworks for Phasing-In Human Participant Face-to-Face Research at University of Guelph (On Campus, Off Campus)
- Guidelines for Human participant Face-to-Face Research