I have a bit of a technical question. It would seem like Major-General Fortin might be the person to answer it, but this isn't really something he's been dealing with.
I know the government has agreed to deploy the army—at least, medical assistance teams—and the Red Cross to southern Ontario to help them deal with the large number of cases overwhelming the health care system there.
Question number one is this: What exactly are they going to do? My understanding is it's likely they have limited ICU capacity. I think the hospital in Kandahar had 10 to 20 ventilated beds. Certainly that's not going to make much of a difference in terms of stemming the number of people in ICUs. How are they going to be used?
Then the second thing is—and this is the important one for me—who determines what they're going to do?
Having been in contact with infectious disease doctors in Ontario in London, Oshawa, Markham and Stouffville, I know there are infectious disease people there who are eager to use the bamlanivimab that was purchased by our government is basically sitting on the shelves. They want to use it. They want to get it into people's arms. Exactly where the problem lies in doing this isn't totally clear, but one of the problems is having infusion sites. Certainly having tents with medics and/or nurses who could infuse them would certainly seem to me to be one way of addressing and trying to deal with the large number of people ending up in the hospital, when studies seem to indicate you need treat eight people as an outpatient to prevent one hospitalization. This is something we could be doing.
Now, who makes the decisions as to what those army units will doing? I kind of fear it isn't going to be as simple as the doctors asking the army for some help. It's going to be, well, the doctors have to talk to the hospital, which has to talk to the province, which has to talk to the science table, which has to talk to PHAC, and it will take months for any decision to be made. Who's going to make that decision as to what the army does?
One, what are they going to do? Two, who is going to determine what they can do? Three, how about using them to infuse monoclonals?