Thank you for your question.
Yes, this is obviously a rapidly expanding area in Canada. Just to rewind for a second, earlier in the pandemic we had some very good therapeutics for hospitalized patients [Technical difficulty—Editor] an armamentarium of therapies for non-hospitalized patients with the whole goal to prevent people from getting sick and landing in hospital.
There have been hiccups, unfortunately. Sotrovimab, for example, and the other monoclonals don't seem to work very well against the current omicron variant. They are not being used, or not being recommended. Paxlovid is in very short supply and has a very narrow range of use. It has to be used very early on in the course of illness and has to be initiated within about four or five days of the onset of illness.
This really dovetails beautifully with our earlier conversation about getting therapeutics out quickly and in a low-barrier manner. For example, of course, we have family physicians, maybe emergency departments, maybe dedicated COVID centres, but also pharmacies and pharmacists, because they're available and they're everywhere. Pharmacists are highly qualified health care providers who can provide this quickly. They can also do the testing on site and respond to that test in real time by providing a drug that's needed in a very timely manner.
We are using these drugs. We're using them to a limited degree because we have (a) a limited supply, and (b) unfortunately omicron took the monoclonals out of our tool box, because they just don't work as well on it. There are a few others that work okay in an outpatient setting, for example, remdesivir, but again, that's an intravenous drug, so it's a bit more challenging to use. With time, we will have more access and more drugs available, and we can put those to good use.