Madam Chair, I thank the member for highlighting the incredible work of both Health Canada and the Public Health Agency of Canada in responding to the coronavirus outbreak in Canada.
Part of the mystery of coronavirus is what does having coronavirus mean for people's future immunity to the disease? In fact, it is something that researchers around the world are working on. We knew that Canada needed to have its own immunity task force, its own approach to understanding serosurveillance in our own country.
Therefore, $200 million in funding is going to support the consortium that will ensure that we can actually move forward with blood tests that will provide better understanding of what having been a positive case with COVID means and whether antibodies can be used in possible future treatments.
The serosurveillance consortium is doing important work as part of the immunity task force and, again, we are so grateful to the excellent researchers and scientists who are contributing their time and energy to this work.