I'm a little confused by the order here.
There's an embarrassment of riches on this panel. There are so many people I'd like to ask questions of.
Lorian, sorry. I can't get to you.
Dr. Wark, too, that was great testimony.
Dr. Schwartz, I'm going to put you on the spot a little because I have a bit of a bone to pick with the science council, and that's over the issue of the use of monoclonal antibodies by infectious disease people in Ontario who certainly want to use them.
There have been a couple of randomized controlled trials with the use of bamlanivimab—which our government bought 40 million dollars' worth of—published in pretty good journals, such as JAMA and the New England Journal of Medicine, showing a benefit when used early in high-risk people.
Another recent case-control study in Clinical Infectious Diseases showed that you needed to treat eight people to prevent one person being admitted to the hospital.
With bamlanivimab, I know the FDA changed its approval, but for the variants we have in Ontario, it still works on 90% to 92% of people.
With the whole bunch of new monoclonal antibody combinations, they're still waiting for approval by Health Canada, but there have been a number of studies, not yet published, in which manufacturers have shown pretty good evidence for a 70% to 80% reduction in hospitalization, again when used early in high-risk individuals.
In fact, a recent GlaxoSmithKline study of their monoclonal antibody had to be stopped early because it was considered unethical to continue the study because of the decrease in hospitalization.
Despite this, infectious disease people in Ontario, 12 of whom I recently wrote an op-ed with, who want to use monoclonal antibodies, can't get hold of it. Why is that?
It would seem that there are a few influential people who aren't elected, some of whom sit on the science table, who feel that there's not enough evidence for the use. What I would question is that these are non-elected people—these are a few infectious disease people—yet why should they have the power to control what other infectious disease people use as therapeutics? Therefore, I'm kind of questioning whether the science table is really serving the public in giving some advice.
Thank you.