Trudeau saying first doses of Moderna’s vaccine have landed

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says the first doses of Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine have landed in Canada.

He tweeted the news with a photo of border agents watching workers preparing to unload a Federal Express cargo plane.

Health Canada authorized the use of the vaccine just yesterday, making it the second vaccine to receive the regulator’s approval after the Pfizer-BioNtech offering was approved on Dec. 9.

Moderna is expected to deliver 168,000 doses by the end of next week.

The federal government has ordered 40 million doses overall from Moderna, enough to vaccinate 20 million Canadians.

While the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is being distributed in different cities across Canada, officials say the Moderna version will be distributed to more remote communities.

That is because it does not need the same extreme-cold storage as the Pfizer-BioNTech version.