Obviously we have some capacity, but in planning for the COVID surge, we have to think beyond the normal influenza season, with its one or two patients, or even three patients, who need immediate evacuation because they're in severe respiratory distress.
One of our surge plans, apart from having the critical-care paramedics, is that we've liaised with the Canadian Armed Forces to see whether we could use a request for assistance, RFA. We could leverage one of their military transport propeller aircrafts, like the Hercules or even a C-17, one of the four-engine jets. We could drive our ambulances on board and and bring the surge response team with the land ambulance capability to these communities. The idea would be to drive to the nursing station, load the patients, provide critical ventilator care, fly back to the regional hospital, drive to the hospital and keep making runs. Because they have such a large capacity, we would be able to move a larger number of patients more quickly.
We did the initial fit tests with our ambulances on the military airframes. They have to work out certain very technical things like where the ambulance needs to sit, given the axle of the aircraft and the load and weight. What happens to any air circulation in the ambulance? Does it actually leave the ambulance and enter the aircraft? They're working out some of those details from a doctrinal point of view, but we've already done the fit tests. Hopefully there is no second wave, but if there is a second wave that requires this, hopefully we'll have this capability on board to off-load some of these communities rapidly.