Health committee  For the mosquitoes in Canada, the closest one that they transmit is West Nile virus. That is in Canada. It's typically a very mild infection. We recommend the typical routines to avoid mosquito bites: tuck your clothes in, wear Off!, etc. But that does not apply to Zika, because Zika is not able to live in....

Health committee  Do you mean people living in Canada? Is that what you're asking?

Health committee  Right.

Health committee  We educate people with our travel health notices for people leaving the country. We've been doing that for several weeks now and we will continue to do that. We're tweeting. It's on Facebook, etc. Every spring we educate people about mosquito bites in general, so those messages will reinforce and support each other.

Health committee  At this point in time, no. This is different from Ebola, for example, where with Ebola there was a person-to-person transmission. With this particular disease it's transmitted through a vector and that is the virus. The vast majority, 80% of people who are infected, have no symptoms whatsoever.

Health committee  Thanks, Matt. That's great. Also within the federal family we're coordinating across several departments, we're working with the provinces and territories, and we're also engaging with the international community. We're communicating—and this is engaging the provinces—regularly with all of our colleagues across the country, consulting experts, providing the latest information, and assembling the guidance, as I mentioned.

Health committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Certainly, it's a privilege to be the very first witness, a double privilege. I have a very short deck. I'm going to go through the deck very quickly. I'm going to ask Dr. Matthew Gilmour, who is the head of our laboratory, NML in Winnipeg, to add to that.

Health committee  Thanks for the question; it's a great opportunity. We're very proud of the work that's going on in our laboratory. It's world class and the laboratory has been recognized as world class for quite some time. On the vaccine itself that we developed, as you know we've licensed that out for commercialization.

Health committee  I'd be delighted, Mr. Chair. That's an excellent question. Having just been there, I want to start by saying that the interventions are working. As you've seen, the numbers have gone down consistently. Clearly, if there's not another case by Saturday, Liberia will be declared Ebola-free.

Health committee  Thank you for the question. We're looking at CNISP and re-evaluating that surveillance system right now to see if we can add those kinds of questions to collect and answer that. CNISP wasn't originally created for research. It was created for surveillance, but it's nice to be able to use that network to do that.

Health committee  Personally I think it's the appropriate balance to take, and yes, I support a very measured approach like this.

Health committee  The balance we have to take between protecting Canadians and trying to assist and trying to deal with the outbreak is always very difficult to do. It's not an outright ban. It's a pause in issuing new visas. In my understanding there are about 1,700 to 1,800 existing visas that will continue to be valid.

Health committee  —minister can issue them on an exceptional basis.

Health committee  I don't think we have concerns with this company. They've been working diligently. Some of the delays have to do with a production process to produce a large amount of vaccine for clinical grade. That took some time. We placed our order with them initially so we would have some vaccine.

Health committee  That's 2010. So it took a long time to get the production facility in place. Once the vaccine was produced and we had some of that early this year, there have been no less than six clinical trials they've engaged with. They have another manufacturing system on line. They've produced some for this year and there will be some in early March 2015, which could be as many as 100 million doses.