Thank you.
I would like to welcome Dr. Ellis as the new vice-chair of the health committee.
I think things are looking really good with respect to COVID. Usually when school returns, that's the time for a real rapid spread of disease, and we really haven't seen that, so I find that really encouraging.
Prior to this meeting, I looked up what is of concern right now. I understand that there was a Swedish study recently looking at the BA.2.75.2 variant, which there is some concern about, even though the variants that are common in Canada right now are the BA.5 and the BA.4.
For the BA.2.75.2, which is apparently a lot worse than those without the “2” on the end, studies apparently show that it seems to escape, that it is no longer sensitive to the antibodies that are out there as a result of either the vaccine or previous infection. Now, I'm not sure what that means. Apparently, in India this has been around for at least a month. It's present in 40 different countries. I saw news reports of it in India a month ago, and yet there don't seem to be any reports of large numbers of people being hospitalized or of deaths in India.
Can you tell me what you know about that variant? There does seem to be concern about the effectiveness of the vaccine and the treatments against that variant.