Christian Steiner: Yes, thank you very much for the question. Yes, I think the situation is very complex including the pandemic and after the pandemic, while we have in the beginning of the pandemic had a lot of treatments of COVID patients and our sales and revenues was surging. When vaccination became available for the disease and also the virus has changed and we had much easier cases and not so many ICU patients from COVID, and so we had to treat less COVID patients. On the other hand, during this pandemic, there was a lot of impact on the healthcare systems. So in the beginning, a lot of ICUs were just blocked for COVID patients so that other patients could not even enter the ICU. Because of this, lot of surgeries have been postponed or even canceled.
And this has led to a lot of death of patients because it could not be operated or treated. So this together with the COVID pandemic and the death of many people who died from this disease or this virus disease many, a big proportion of the elderly population has died or suffered. And this has also led to a situation that in 2022, we had less patients on the ICUs. So while the situation with the limited personnel in ICU is remaining, I think patients are slowly coming back. And this is mainly because the surgery programs have been accelerated again, and not yet on full speed, but much better than in the beginning of 2022. And yes, I think this is mainly the striving situation with the patients on ICU and cardiac surgery. Phil, any additions?
Phillip Chan: Yes, I think as Christian mentioned, the €“ further we €“ I think the FDA will actually call into the pandemic soon given that the rates of COVID are very low around the world. And I think that the impact that COVID will have on our markets will sequentially decline. Certainly a number of the issues that we face in the market today in terms of staffing shortages that it foresee worldwide, particularly in nursing remain. But I think gradually those things will get better. One of the major things that I mentioned in my remarks that really hurt was the drop in the euro, the weakness in the euro given them a lot of our €“ the majority in fact, of our revenue are base in euro that drop in the euro caused a significant drop in our revenue base in dollars.
And so I think that given that the euro has likely bottomed as of last year, it’s still close to parody to the U.S. dollar. But I think that predictions are that the euro will remain stronger than the dollar. And so year-over-year comparison should look better. So I think that’s one thing that we look forward to not having to talk about every quarter. But I think, other things are improving as well. But and certainly it’s been helpful that our stock prices improved which opens up a lot of opportunities for us to gain new investors and other things. So thank you.
Sean Lee: Great. Thank you. My second question is on the endocarditis study. The results are certainly very encouraging. So I was wondering whether a similarly design study, prospective study could be used to support U.S. approval in that indication?
Phillip Chan: Makis, do you want to take that question?
Efthymios Deliargyris: Sure. So yes, endocarditis is it’s an exciting area. Last year we hired our Vice President of Medical Cardiovascular, Dr. Daniel Wendt, who was a distinguished cardiac surgeon for many years and kept telling us about the clear benefits that you saw and how well these patients were doing when treated with CytoSorb endocarditis patients. And now we’re seeing again, data coming out from multiple centers suggesting that managing, hyper inflammation, controlling hemodynamics, very important in the outcomes of these patients. So absolutely there’s a possibility for us to design a prospective and execute the prospective study. However, what you heard from the last earnings, and you’re also hearing again today from us, is that there’s also a need and desire to stay focused and to execute at a task at hand.
So with STAR-T and STAR-D already determined as being our next two studies I think in endocarditis study would fit very nicely down the road since we will be working with the same institutions, the same physicians, the same investigators. And with the data accumulating, we could probably identify the right population study. So, focus on antithrombotic removal for the near term, but certainly looking at endocarditis as an opportunity in the midterm.
Sean Lee: I appreciate your thoughts. Thanks. That’s all I have.
Phillip Chan: Thanks, Sean.
Operator: Next question comes from Tom Kerr with Zacks Investment Research. Please go ahead.
Tom Kerr: Hi guys. Most of my questions have been asked and answered. Just two quick financial ones. Can you refresh my memory on the grant income backlog? Is that received over one year? Does that get spread out over two to three years, I forget?
Phillip Chan: Yes, the grant backlog is 11.5 million, and it’s typically spread out over multiple years. These contracts with the DoD and other agencies are typically multi-year contracts where those dollars are earned over the course of the contract?
Tom Kerr: Okay. But we don’t know if this is a two or three year contract or related to timeframe?
