Montreal (AFP)

Canada, which has ordered more than 400 million doses of anti-Covid vaccines, is ready to share with the rest of the world any surpluses, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said in an interview.

"If we have more vaccines than we need, we will definitely share them with the world," said Justin Trudeau, days after the start of a historic vaccination campaign.

The interview with CTV, which the English-speaking channel has published extracts on its site, will be broadcast on Sunday.

In total, Canada, a country of 38 million people, has ordered and placed options on more than 400 million doses of vaccines from seven pharmaceutical groups, one of the highest ratios in the world according to Trudeau.

"In January, we will receive 125,000 doses of Pfizer's vaccine per week, for a total of about 500,000 doses for this month," Justin Trudeau said during a press briefing on Friday.

The country should also receive 200,000 doses of the vaccine from Pfizer / BioNTech next week and 168,000 doses of the vaccine from Moderna before the end of December, after its approval by Health Canada expected in the coming days.

If approved, Moderna's vaccine will join that of Pfizer / BioNTech, whose first injections were administered to nursing home workers and residents in Ontario and Quebec on Monday.

Canada plans to vaccinate three million people by the end of the first quarter of 2021.

The World Health Organization (WHO) and the Alliance for Vaccines (Gavi), have set up a Covax mechanism (Covid-19 Vaccine Global Access; global access to the vaccine against Covid-19) to distribute vaccines anti-Covid in disadvantaged countries.

This mechanism "has obtained nearly two billion" of doses so far, said Friday the director general of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, in a press conference.

In September, Canada pledged to invest approximately $ 220 million (€ 141 million) in this facility.

The country, where the spread of the virus accelerated as the end of the year holidays approached, had 492,701 cases of coronavirus and 13,992 dead on Friday.

© 2020 AFP