Canada will begin distributing the covid-19 vaccine from the US Pfizer / BioNTech alliance on Monday, days after being one of the first countries to approve the treatment.
The first shipment of vaccines arrived in Canada on Sunday night.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau welcomed the “good news,” but recorded that the “fight against covid-19 is not over,” on his Twitter account. “Now more than ever, let’s be more vigilant,” he added.
Canada will receive 249,000 doses of the vaccine this month and expects to have the first 30,000 by Monday, the prime minister says.
According to local media, the vaccine will be distributed the same day in Quebec, the province most affected by the pandemic, and the first beneficiaries will be nursing homes.
In neighboring Ontario, the distribution of the vaccine will begin on Tuesday as part of a plan to protect 2,500 workers in hospitals and nursing homes.
As for the provinces tomorrow, “they will be in a position to administer the vaccines in the next few days,” Dany Fortin, in charge of distributing the treatment in Canada, told CBC on Sunday.
The US ordered 20 million doses of the Pfizer and BioNTech vaccine when it was still under development, with the possibility of acquiring an additional 56 million doses.
The product, which showed 95% efficacy in clinical trials, is administered in two doses 21 days apart.
Canada has recorded 460,743 cases of coronavirus and has suffered more than 13,400 deaths since the start of the pandemic.