Canada PM Trudeau to receive vaccination publicly only ‘when turn comes’

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will receive the COVID-19 shot in public only when those in his age group are in line to be vaccinated, he said in an interview broadcast Sunday, AFP reported. 

Canada began vaccinating people in high-risk categories — including frontline health care workers and residents and staff of long-term care facilities — on December 14, with a relatively limited supply of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.

“Absolutely,” Trudeau, who turns 49 on Christmas Day, told the CBC public network in a year-end interview. “When my turn comes, I will do it publicly and enthusiastically.”

Trudeau added that he would follow the recommendations of public health experts.

“Whenever, you know, healthy adults in their 40s are open to getting vaccines, I’ll be getting vaccinated,” said the prime minister.

Trudeau’s wife Sophie Gregoire Trudeau tested positive for the coronavirus in March, and he spent two weeks in self-imposed quarantine.

He admitted on Sunday he might have had an extremely mild case of the disease.

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“It’s very possible that I caught it,” Trudeau said. “I don’t know. I was absolutely asymptomatic.”

He said doctors told him to get tested if he had so much as a sniffle, but “(I) didn’t have a sniffle.”

Meanwhile, Canada expects to receive additional vaccine doses soon both from the Pfizer and Moderna suppliers, once health officials authorize the latter.

The Moderna authorization is expected “in coming weeks,” according to the government’s Health Canada.

In total, Canada — a country of 38 million — has placed orders or options on more than 400 million doses of vaccine from seven pharmaceutical groups.

The country will share any excess doses with other countries, Trudeau said in a separate interview Sunday with the CTV network.

The spread of the virus has accelerated as the year-end holidays approach.

On Saturday, Canada passed the grim mark of 500,000 confirmed cases, reaching more than 509,000 by Sunday, along with 14,212 deaths, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University.

Quebec, the province with the highest toll, set a new daily record Sunday with 2,146 new cases.

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Earlier, US Vice President Mike Pence, 61, became the highest-profile American leader to be vaccinated for the coronavirus on December 18. Pence’s wife Karen and Surgeon General Jerome Adams also received shots on live television.

It was an attempt to persuade vaccine-sceptic Americans to join the massive national effort to halt the rampaging pandemic.

President-elect Joe Biden, who will take office on January 20, announced he is set to take the vaccine on Monday.

Elsewhere, world leaders, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, also pledged to get public injections in order to boost confidence in the vaccines.

 Earlier on Sunday, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took the vaccine jab to join the list of leaders vaccinated ahead of the queue, ostensibly to boost the public confidence in the vaccine.