Again, we are not that familiar with what provinces had in their respective stockpiles. Realizing our focus is very much on PPE for the health sector, one of the first things we did very quickly was to get a heads-up in terms of where there would be national and international gaps. We made a decision to do bulk procurement simply because we have a competitive advantage when we go with bulk procurement.
We put out a number of orders through Public Services and Procurement Canada for the things that we knew were going to be in short supply, such as gowns and N95 masks. The bulk procurement gave us an advantage. When we receive these things, we actually allocate them to our provincial and territorial counterparts in the health sector. There's a base amount that goes out just to make sure they have some supply in terms of planning and preparedness, but the initial requests for assistance really deal with urgent needs.
Our provincial and territorial counterparts know what they have in stock and they're getting more familiar with their burn rates. For example, if they have 25,000 medical masks, they know they will need more on Saturday. That is for our priority distribution. In many instances, it is a just-in-time distribution, complemented, where there aren't such acute shortages, by getting things pre-positioned for the longer term.
That's really how we are working now with our procurement folks and our provincial and territorial counterparts. Our distribution either comes to the NESS first, and then goes to our provincial and territorial counterparts, or, depending on the origin of the supply, it doesn't have to come through the NESS but can go directly where the needs are.