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OTTAWA: Canada will begin receiving its first doses of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine before the end of December, earlier than expected, with millions more by early 2021, authorities said Monday (December 7).
The news could help Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s liberal minority government fend off attacks by opposition parties that have accused Ottawa of acting too slowly to cope with the worsening of the second wave of the coronavirus.
Officials initially expected to receive a total of six million doses of vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna by the end of March.
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That would be enough to inoculate three million people, since both vaccines require two injections a month apart.
But Trudeau said as many as 249,000 doses of the vaccine that Pfizer is producing with German partner BionNTech SE would arrive this month, with another three million doses due to be delivered by early 2021.
“It has been a difficult year and we have not yet come out of this crisis. But now, the vaccines are coming,” he said at a briefing, repeating that Ottawa expects health regulators to approve the Pfizer vaccine this week.
Several provinces are re-imposing restrictions on companies and limiting the size of meetings as the number of new cases sets daily records. Canada has reported a total of 415,182 COVID-19 cases and 12,665 deaths.
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The doses will initially be delivered to 14 sites so that priority groups such as healthcare workers, the elderly and people living in remote indigenous communities can be vaccinated against the virus. The Pfizer vaccine was shown to be 95% effective in preventing disease in a large clinical trial.
The military will help with what Trudeau called the “incredibly complex” task of distributing vaccines in what is the world’s second-largest nation by area, much of which is remotely populated.
Erin O’Toole, leader of the official opposition Conservatives, said it was unacceptable that Trudeau had not made it clear when all Canadians would be vaccinated.
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