Health committee  In regard to surge capacity, we've been working with provinces and territories. They have been taking steps to rapidly bring on and relicense retired physicians and other health workers and to work with students. We're encouraging and supporting them to consider foreign-credentia

Health committee  As has been noted, we are working in a combined effort with Public Services and Procurement Canada to proactively order and secure supplies, and to arrange transport for supplies, wherever we can find them in the world—masks, gloves, N95 masks and other essential goods. We are wo

Health committee  It's just to emphasize the critical importance of all jurisdictions and all of these facilities working very carefully to ensure that all of those measures that were noted are put in place. It is critical to protect the residents and to ensure that the workers in those facilities

Health committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. As I noted in my opening remarks, the Government of Canada has put out a request for proposals and is going to be awarding a contract to a group of providers who can provide an online mental health portal to allow comprehensive psychosocial supports for Can

Health committee  I would just note briefly that critical to this work is ongoing collaboration with provinces and territories and other key partners who can supply needed materials and resources to help address the pandemic. That collaboration is essential, given that provinces and territories ru

Health committee  Thank you. I have perhaps just a couple of notes further to the response. One, as I have noted, is that we are working with provinces and territories as well to ensure that there is guidance on appropriate use to protect our front-line workers and to ensure that there is no unne

Health committee  In regard to the approval, indeed we've approved these, and we are in the process of approving and have approved other diagnostic tests. We are working with a Canadian company, Spartan, to approve their rapid test kit and have conditionally ordered with them to ensure that it can

Health committee  The actual testing rate in Canada, as was noted, is that we're up to over 225,000, or about 6,000 per million population, which is very much in the very top tier, testing globally. We want to continue to improve on that. In terms of the testing, it varies day to day but it is on

Health committee  The ability to turn around specific test results—the timing—varies province by province as they optimize their lab systems and ensure a turnaround as quickly as possible to Canadians. Work is under way in some provinces to clear the backlog of tests and to optimize their system.

Health committee  I would simply note that efforts are being made on a broad number of fronts in Canada, from working with firms and research labs that have potential vaccine candidates, to providing support to researchers not only to do the research but to ensure that we can participate in clinic

Health committee  What I would just note briefly is that there is some evidence coming in, as provinces provide more detailed epidemiological data, of the impact of measures, and in particular of the social distancing measures. British Columbia did release some data last Friday that showed that th

Health committee  Thank you for the question, Mr. Chair. We have been working with the Canadian Blood Services and the council of federal-provincial-territorial deputy ministers to ensure that they are aware of and follow the guidelines in terms of the use of personal protective equipment. I have

Health committee  As I noted, we are working closely with the provinces and territories on managing their health care systems. A number of them have established COVID-specific parts of hospitals as well as alternate facilities, to allow patients to move out of those hospitals, so they can focus ef

Health committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. We have had an ongoing process supported by the Public Health Agency of Canada to understand the needs of provinces and territories and to contribute to the bulk purchases the Government of Canada is making on their behalf. Certainly, President Namiesniowsk

Health committee  We would be happy to provide the honourable member asking the question and the committee with a list of the key contact points for entrepreneurs. There's a web portal established with members of the National Research Council, the industrial research program, who review every requ