It may not have been Santa's sleigh but Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau knows that for most of the country, the UPS flight was nearly as good.

Within minutes of the first doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine landing in Canada on Sunday night, Trudeau tweeted a picture of the aircraft's precious cargo but noted: "our fight against COVID-19 is not over."

Among the early recipients were a personal support care worker in Toronto and an elderly resident in Montreal as Canada began distributing its first 30,000 doses.

"I feel it's emotional because I know how worried and anxious families and health care workers are across the country, how we've all worked so hard as a country to save lives and stop the spread," said Patty Hajdu, Canada's health minister, who said she cried as she talked to one of the early recipients in Montreal.

But Canadian officials are the first to admit that the vaccine rollout will not be as widespread as in the United States or the United Kingdom because of what they describe as a "fiercely competitive" global scramble for early doses.

"We are dealing with an incredibly competitive global environment," said Anita Anand, Canada's minister of procurement at a news conference Monday, adding, "We've been able to negotiate hard, with fortitude, to bring early doses into this country."
While Trudeau told Canadians last week that the country would receive 249,000 doses before year's end, Anand made it clear the number could actually be less than half that.

Canadian public health officials say about 2,900 people are currently hospitalized with Covid-19, and nearly one in five of those patients are in intensive care.
During the past week, Canada reported an average of 100 Covid-related deaths daily, very close to the spring peak.

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https://edition.cnn.com/2020/12/14/americas/canada-covid-19-vaccinations/index.html