Government Operations committee  They have, given the scale. I think starting in the summer our cost of goods is going to go down, and that's why we've already been negotiating with the government. For example, we will be dropping the price of our devices by 50% starting in mid-summer.

Government Operations committee  Similarly for us, it will probably be 20 to 30 people in the next two months and then that contract manufacturing in Mississauga will probably mean several hundred people, and then we'll probably add another 200 or 300 people over the next several years.

Government Operations committee  It's a self-contained kit. Think of it like a blood glucose meter. This gives you everything you need, and you can plug it into a laptop or a tablet, and it will tell you your COVID-19 result. You need nothing else external. It's all self-contained.

Government Operations committee  That's correct. The DNA analysis is automatically done by an on-board microprocessor with our special algorithms, so it does everything. This is why this is the future of diagnostics, because right now you have to ship those swabs off to a central lab and PHD has to analyze the r

Government Operations committee  Yes, COVID-19 is a virus, and our test cartridge extracts the genetic material from the COVID-19 virus, amplifies it up a billion times and then detects it, analyzes it and gives the user what the result is automatically.

Government Operations committee  That's correct, so there are no privacy concerns from analyzing the human DNA. It only looks for the presence or absence of the coronavirus genetic material.

Government Operations committee  For our company, we had a government contract for legionnaires' disease testing with the same small device and the same cartridges.

Government Operations committee  It was the government that reached out to us. It was very apropos because we had already been developing our portable COVID-19 test in parallel. It was ready when the government called us.

Government Operations committee  It's really a function of money, actually. I'll show you the different components of our test. We actually make all of the components: the swab, the actual test cartridge and then the device.

Government Operations committee  That is our vision, to eventually get it into your bathroom. In terms of ramping up the supply chain, what really helped was when we got the orders from the federal and provincial governments. I think we got about a 10% down payment. We immediately put that into our suppliers be

Government Operations committee  Thank you, Mr. MacKinnon. It's good to be in contact with you again. In terms of supply chain, one of the things that we found Canada is very good at is that we have tier one contract manufacturers that have domestic capacity. A few weeks ago, we signed a major contract with San

Government Operations committee  Yes, the government has been very good at working with us, not only with the down payments from the federal and provincial governments but also with BDC. They made a line of credit available to us, and that has allowed us to scale up extremely quickly.

Government Operations committee  Thank you. I appreciate the invitation to attend today's meeting and talk about my company, Spartan Bioscience. It's an honour to address you, the members of Parliament on the government operations committee. I am Spartan Bioscience's chief executive officer. I am responsible fo

Government Operations committee  It's 30 to 45 minutes, depending on the test, as opposed to hours with the big mainframes.

Government Operations committee  Thank you, Mr. Drouin.