Amid the fear of a second covid wave, Canada has approved the use of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine in the country. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that Canada will have up to 249,000 doses of the two-dose vaccine by this year's end to start a mass inoculation campaign.
The first doses of the Pfizer vaccine are expected to arrive in Canada next week, and plans are already in place to have the shots ready to be administered at 14 delivery sites in major cities across Canada, within one or two days of shipments arriving.
As the nation would receive limited quantities of the vaccine, in the beginning, prioritized groups will be vaccinated first. Staff and residents in long-term care and other senior citizens living in facilities and health-care workers with high exposure risks to the virus are amongst the first to get the vaccine shot.
The Canadian government has said its target is to vaccinate the majority of the citizens by September 2021; it will be free of charge, not mandatory, and will eventually be available to all who want to be vaccinated.
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According to the Public Health Agency. A sharp increase in Covid-19 cases and deaths continued in Canada, which saw the average daily case count to over 6,415 cases for seven days.
So far Canada has reported a total of 432,659 Coronavirus cases with 12,931 deaths.