Canada PM Trudeau believes most of the citizens will receive COVID vaccines by next Sept

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, on November 27, said that he expects more than half of his country’s population to be vaccinated against COVID-19 by next September. Last week, the 48-year-old attracted flak after he claimed that Canadians might not be the first ones to receive the vaccine as it does not have a vaccine production facility. He also noted that the United States, United Kingdom, and Germany might get it first even with COVID-19 cases in Canada surpassing 3,62,000. 

‘Early next year’

Although he did not specify a particular month, the Prime Minister asserted that he expects a COVID-19 vaccine to arrive early in 2021. Speaking at a press briefing on COVID-19 and vaccine rollout, Prime Minister Trudeau said that although the pandemic was a race to get to the starting line first, it doesn’t get over until everyone reaches the finish line.

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“What really matters is when we get to cross the finish line and the fact that the doctors highlighted that if all goes according to plan, we should be able to have a majority of Canadians vaccinated by next September, puts us in a very good stead.”

Canada inks deal with Pfizer 

According to top officials, Pfizer-BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine candidate could be approved by Health Canada as early as next month. With Ottawa inking a deal with Pfizer’s to secure at least 20 million doses of its vaccine candidate, experts predict that as many as three million Canadians could get vaccine shots by March 2021.

'Stay at home during Christmas'

Earlier this month, Trudeau appealed to the citizens to stay-at-home despite the Christmas season around the corner. In a live-streamed address on November 20, the Canadian leader warned, people needed to immediately shrink the number of people they meet, halt nonessential movement, and work from home just as he will as the coronavirus cases across Canada were “spiking massively.”  Citing the overwhelming numbers of the confirmed COVID-19 cases that have strained the healthcare systems to the brink of collapse, Trudeau said, “ a normal Christmas" in 2020 was “quite frankly right out of question.”

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