Canada is expected to receive the largest number of COVID-19 vaccine doses this week as vaccine deliveries switch into high gear.
Nearly 1.2 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine are set to arrive this week, alongside 846,000 shots of the product developed by Moderna.
In addition, Public Procurement Minister Anita Anand said on Friday that Canada was finalizing an agreement with its neighbour to the south that would see Ottawa receive 1.5 million doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca shot before the end of the month.
The federal government also expects to begin receiving the one-dose shot from Johnson & Johnson in April, though that timeline too has yet to be finalized.
Anand has said Canada is expected to receive a total of 9.5 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines by the end of the first quarter of this year.
The accelerated pace of inoculation deliveries marks a dramatic reversal from earlier in the year, when production delays in Europe caused the pharmaceutical giants producing the coveted shots to pause a number of international shipments.
The Public Health Agency of Canada said Sunday that more than 670,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccines were administered last week alone. Government figures show more than 3.95 million doses have been administered across Canada as of Sunday, and 629,956 people have been fully vaccinated. That means only about 1.6 per cent of Canadians have been fully vaccinated so far.
Since the start of the pandemic, there have been 930,516 cases of COVID-19, including 22,643 deaths reported in Canada.
With files from The Canadian Press
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