Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I would like to thank all the witnesses for joining us. I will turn to Dr. Bélanger first.
We have gone through the first and second waves, and we are starting the third. The pandemic has forced our networks to organize care into two categories of patients: those who have COVID-19 and those who do not.
We seem to be forgetting that the real effects of the pandemic will really emerge when we have a complete handle on the situation of patients who do not have COVID-19. It would be wrong to think that we will have overcome the pandemic when everyone is immunized because the pandemic will still have collateral effects, perhaps for more than one year, perhaps more than two.
The figures are horrifying. You told us just now that 110,000 people are waiting for a colonoscopy and that 63% of the colonoscopies are late. You also told us that colon cancer is the third most frequent and the second most deadly.
So what are the consequences of those delays? What are your fears?