The first shipments of the COVID-19 vaccine have arrived in Canada.
Some of the country's initial 30,000 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines touched down on Sunday night, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced on Twitter, sharing a photo of a plane being unloaded.
"This is good news," he said. "But our fight against COVID-19 is not over. Now more than ever, let's keep up our vigilance."
The plane touched down at Mirabel International Airport in Montreal, the local airport authority said, adding that it wouldn't share any further details.
The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines are bound for 14 distribution sites across the country, across all 10 provinces, and more doses are expected to cross the border on Monday. Quebec is expected to be the first province to administer the vaccine, inoculating residents of two long-term care homes as early as Monday.
Other provinces say they'll vaccinate long-term care residents and front-line health-care workers later in the week. While it's unclear what percentage of people will opt to be vaccinated, demand appears to be very high in at least one province. In Manitoba, which reported 273 new COVID-19 cases and seven additional deaths linked to the virus on Sunday, the government said it received over 100,000 calls from people trying to book appointments for the vaccine.
The territories, however, have no distribution sites, because health officials say the Pfizer shot's -70 C storage temperature makes it difficult to stock there. News of the vaccines' imminent arrival came as Quebec and Ontario -- the provinces with the most COVID-19 cases -- reported a combined 3,671 new positive tests and 49 additional deaths linked to the virus.
--with files from CTV News--