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Summary
- Canada received its first shipments of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines Montreal late in the night on Sunday, December 13.
- The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines batch would be on their way to 14 distribution sites across the country.
- National health care regulator Health Canada announced on December 9 that the Pfizer vaccine had cleared its evaluations.
- While calling the arrival of the doses a “good news”, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stressed that the vaccines, however, don’t mean the end of the “fight against COVID-19”.
Right in the middle of Hannukah and ahead of Christmas, Canada has received its first shipments of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau broke the news on Twitter just as the plane carrying a batch of 30,000 doses landed at Mirabel International Airport in Montreal late in the night on Sunday, December 13.
The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines batch would be on their way to 14 distribution sites across the country. Meanwhile, more doses of the drug are expected to reach Canada on Monday, December 14.
The vaccine is likely to be administered first in the province of Quebec, which is reportedly all geared up to initiate the inoculation process with a couple of long-term care homes on Monday. Other provinces are also expected to inoculate their long-term care residents and frontline health care officials first, as per reports.
While calling the arrival of the doses a “good news”, Prime Minister Trudeau stressed that the vaccines, however, don’t mean the end of the “fight against COVID-19”.
Canada & Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccines
After much wait, national health care regulator Health Canada announced last week on December 9 that the Pfizer Inc (NYSE: PFE, PFE:US) vaccine had cleared its evaluations. The jab, however, has been cleared for administration only for Canadians over the age of 16 as clinical tests for children are still underway.
Prime Minister Trudeau has announced earlier in December that Canada would receive some 249,000 doses of the Pfizer shot by the end of December and another round of about three million doses by January 2021.
The Canadian government has reserved some 20 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. Along with all the pre-orders with other brands, Canada is said to have access to over 400 million COVID vaccine doses for a population of 38 million people.
Health Canada is currently evaluating three more COVID-19 vaccine candidates, so clearance of more shots can be expected in coming weeks.
