A few months ago I would have said I was very concerned about the ventilator issue. Our model suggests we've probably got enough ventilators, or close to it, now. If you take into account the extra stores individual places have--the federal stockpile, etc.--I think we're there. We still could be tight.
And I have to tell you that one of the things I am disappointed about in terms of where we are right now is that we really haven't come up with a good strategy to redeploy resources from one place to another. Because the way this pandemic will play out in Canada, as it has played out in every other pandemic, is that it's going to be like raindrops falling on the country. You don't know who is going to get hit and when and how severely. One can say that overall our models would suggest we are close to being ready, but some places may be overwhelmed because they will be hit particularly hard. And the question of how one redeploys resources from one place to another is not really clear, in my mind. Yes, we have these kinds of arrangements for nurses and doctors to be able to be licensed, but on an operational level, how do you do that? So that's one concern.
The other concern, as you mentioned, is that there are some subtle supply chain issues that I don't think have been adequately addressed. For example, when we got hit in Manitoba, we found that our patients required absolutely massive doses of sedation to keep them in a state in which they could be effectively ventilated. Being on a ventilator is very unnatural, so one requires a certain level of sedation. But these people required a massive amount. We ran out of sedatives on several occasions. Because we were the only place in the country being hit, we could import sedatives. If there are a lot of places being hit at the same time, that could be a problem.
Just to give you an idea of how much sedation we used, Keith, we went through 18 months' worth of sedation in two months.