Thank you for that question.
Mr. Chair, as you and many who watch the media briefings or the press conferences will know, we've been providing modelling information on a regular basis. There are different types of models. There are ones that are longer-term, but only good for, let's say, a month's time frame, where we input, through surveillance and epidemiological data, some forecasting on the case trajectory but also on hospitalizations, as well as projections on mortality. Those are important if you are thinking about adjusting policies. Are the cases going up? How fast are they going up? Are they coming down and at what rate? What might the impacts be?
Our last modelling certainly would suggest that, with the lifting of provincial public health measures, there could be some resurgence, particularly in the context of a very highly transmissible variant. We are watching that very carefully right now, because the cases are plateauing as they are coming down. They may be at a point of resurgence. We do want to know that the hospitals are not being impacted as that resurgence occurs and feeds into some of the federal decisions.
We also have other types of models that are used for planning purposes. They input a number of variables that include vaccine uptake and vaccine effectiveness. They don't as yet include waning immunity, but all of those models tell us something about how we should strengthen booster doses and look forward to the timing of those and what might happen in terms of provision of those models in the slightly medium and longer term.
Vaccine effectiveness, uptake and all that is taken into account as well. Then there's the international epidemiology and, as many people have seen, there's a resurgence of cases in many areas of the world at the moment.