Provinces are preparing to roll out the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine after it was approved by Health Canada on Wednesday, with many hoping to start inoculating high-risk populations like health-care workers and long-term care residents by next week.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Thursday “the first 30,000 doses are expected to arrive in just a few days” and that the vaccine will be “free for Canadians” with the federal government covering the costs. But the logistics of storing the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine has presented provinces with challenges, and all but rule out the territories from receiving them.
Here is a look at plans across the country.
Alberta
About 3,900 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine will arrive in Alberta next week, and immunizations for ICU doctors and nurses, respiratory therapists and long-term care workers are expected to begin Dec. 16. Since two doses are required, that means around 1,950 people will be immunized.
Because the initial doses of the vaccine can be administered only at the sites where it is delivered — due to the need for ultra-cold storage — the province is not yet able to begin vaccinating patients at facilities. Instead, shots will be given at the two initial shipment locations in Edmonton and Calgary.
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The first acute-care staff to get the vaccines will come from the Foothills Hospital and the Peter Lougheed Centre in Calgary, and from University of Alberta and Royal Alexandra hospitals in Edmonton. Alberta Health Services will book appointments for those staff to receive their second dose when they receive their first.
The Government of Alberta says it anticipates it will be able to immunize up to 435,000 Albertans who are most at-risk between January and March 2021.
Starting in January, the following groups will receive the vaccine:
Long-term care and some supported living residents and staff.
Seniors age 75 and older.
On-reserve First Nations people over age 65.
Health-care workers most needed to ensure workforce capacity.
Ontario
Ontario will administer its first COVID-19 vaccines next Tuesday at two hospitals in Toronto and Ottawa.
The first vaccines will go to health-care workers at long-term care homes and other high-risk places, Premier Doug Ford said in a news release.
More details are set to be provided on Friday, Ford’s statement said.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford looks at freezers ahead of COVID-19 vaccine distribution in Toronto on Tuesday. (Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press)
Manitoba
Manitoba is slated to receive doses next week, and expects to receive enough to vaccinate more than 100,000 people by March 31 of next year.
The first 1,950 doses are reserved for health-care workers in the critical care field, the vast majority of whom work in Winnipeg. Over the next three months, more locations will be established in Winnipeg, Brandon, Thompson, Steinbach, Gimli, Portage la Prairie and The Pas.
Details on how the first 900 health workers can book appointments to get the vaccine will be released in the coming days.
Beyond that, the province is still working out details on how it will notify people that they are eligible for the vaccine.
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Health-care workers in critical-care units will be the first in Manitoba to get the COVID-19 vaccine once initial doses — enough for about 900 people — arrive in the province next week, Premier Brian Pallister says. 1:54
Saskatchewan
Vaccine doses will start arriving in Saskatchewan next week and will be given to health-care workers at Regina General Hospital who provide direct care to COVID-19 patients.
Phase 1 of the province’s vaccine delivery plan — with 202,052 doses expected within the first quarter of 2021 — will focus on health-care workers, elderly residents in care homes, seniors over 80 and residents in northern remote communities.
Phase 2 of the vaccine rollout, which will see the general population begin to be vaccinated, is scheduled to begin in April 2021.
There will be 14 locations across 10 provinces where people can be inoculated with the first batch of the vaccine. Doses must be kept in ultra-cold storage, which has caused logistical challenges. (CBC News)
British Columbia
B.C. plans on immunizing 400,000 people against COVID-19 by March 2021, with priority given to residents and staff of long-term care homes and health-care workers.
As more doses of the vaccine become available, priority will be given to seniors over 80, people with underlying health conditions, people who are underhoused, and people living in remote and isolated Indigenous communities.
By April, front-line workers including teachers, grocery store workers, firefighters and people working in food processing plants will be prioritized.
As doses increase, Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry says vaccines will be distributed, moving down the population age range in increments.
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Quebec
A limited number of vaccine doses will likely be available in Quebec starting next week.
Patients in residential and long-term care centres, which accounted for the vast majority of deaths related to COVID-19, will be the first to get the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in the province as early as next Monday. Patients will receive the vaccinations on site.
People living in private seniors’ residences and those in isolated communities, including Indigenous communities and particularly those located in Nunavik and James Bay, will be next.
The next groups to receive the vaccine will be organized by age, starting with those 80 and up, then 70 to 79, and 60 to 69, followed by those who are 60 and under and have other risk factors.
Health officials said the initial, limited quantity of vaccine doses should be reserved for seniors, long-term care residents, health-care workers and those in the Indigenous community. (CBC News)
New Brunswick
The first doses of Pfizer-BioNTech’s vaccine will arrive in New Brunswick around Dec. 14, with a second shipment before the end of the year.
The first shipment will be delivered to the Miramichi Regional Hospital, said Greg MacCallum, director of the New Brunswick Emergency Measures Organization, who is leading the rollout of the vaccine. It was chosen based on its central location, said MacCallum. The hospital — which has installed an ultra-low-temperature freezer — can be reached within two or three hours from virtually anywhere in the province, he said.
Health Minister Dorothy Shephard said long-term care residents and staff, health-care workers, emergency responders and seniors will be prioritized.
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Newfoundland and Labrador
Health Minister John Haggie said a thermal shipper — used to keep vaccine doses at a consistent temperature during transport — arrived in N.L. on Wednesday, with vaccine deliveries expected next week.
Haggie said the province’s vaccine committee also met on Wednesday morning with distribution plans “significantly advanced.” He said by the time the vaccine arrives the province will be in a position to “highlight” high-risk groups who will receive the first doses.
That first batch of nearly 250,000 doses will be available in Canada before the end of the year. (CBC News)
Prince Edward Island
Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Heather Morrison said the first doses of COVID-19 vaccine could arrive on P.E.I. as early as next week, allowing the province to vaccinate 1,000 people, starting with the most vulnerable: residents and staff in long-term care.
Crews work to move two lab-approved super freezers that can reach –87 C from a tuna plant in North Lake, P.E.I., to Charlottetown. The owner of the plant is lending them to the province to help store the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for distribution. (Jason Tompkins)
Nova Scotia
Nova Scotia is expecting one batch of 1,950 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine this month, with regular weekly allotments starting in January.
The first people in the province to receive the vaccine will be front-line health-care workers, Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Robert Strang announced Tuesday.
Premier Stephen McNeil said Nova Scotia chose to target frontline health-care workers first because they are the ones most likely to transmit the virus to long-term care residents and the elderly.
Right now the only freezer in the province with temperatures cold enough to store the vaccines is in Halifax. As such, the first doses will have to be administered in the central zone.
McNeil said anyone tapped for priority access who is outside the Halifax area will be brought in to receive their dose.
An ultra-low temperature freezer that will store the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine is seen in Halifax. (Nova Scotia government)
Territories
That first batch of nearly 250,000 doses of Pfizer-BioNTech’s vaccine will be available in Canada before the end of the year, but none will go to the territories. The North lacks the freezers needed to store the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, which the company says requires a freezer at -80 C to -60 C or a thermal container at -90 C to -60 C.
Dr. Michael Patterson, Nunavut’s chief public health officer, said the territory is more likely to get the Moderna vaccine because the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine’s strict storage and shipping requirements aren’t appropriate for remote communities. He said Nunavut’s vaccines would be mostly, if not entirely, from Moderna.
There are several vaccines under consideration by Health Canada, with Pfizer-BioNTech’s vaccine the only one approved so far. (CBC News)
Similarly, Yukon officials announced that the Moderna vaccine will begin arriving in the territory in January. Premier Sandy Silver said Thursday that all adults who want the vaccine will receive it for free, within the first three months of 2021.
Health Minister Pauline Frost said Yukon will get 50,400 doses by the end of March. This is enough to cover 25,000 people according to a government statement. Frost said priority will be given to residents and staff of long-term care homes, health-care and personal support workers, adults over 80, and Yukon residents in rural or remote communities.
The Northwest Territories government expects the Moderna vaccine to be available to 75 per cent of the territory’s “eligible population” in “early 2021,” according to a statement issued Thursday.
WASHINGTON (AP) — An Alaska man accused of sending graphic threats to injure and kill six Supreme Court justices and some of their family members has been indicted on federal charges, authorities said Thursday.
Panos Anastasiou, 76, is accused of sending more than 465 messages through a public court website, including graphic threats of assassination and torture coupled with racist and homophobic rhetoric.
The indictment does not specify which justices Anastasiou targeted, but Attorney General Merrick Garland said he made the graphic threats as retaliation for decisions he disagreed with.
“Our democracy depends on the ability of public officials to do their jobs without fearing for their lives or the safety of their families,” he said.
Anastasiou has been indicted on 22 counts, including nine counts of making threats against a federal judge and 13 counts of making threats in interstate commerce.
He was released from detention late Thursday by a federal magistrate in Anchorage with a a list of conditions, including that he not directly or indirectly contact any of the six Supreme Court justices he allegedly threatened or any of their family members.
During the hearing that lasted more than hour, Magistrate Kyle Reardon noted some of the messages Anastasiou allegedly sent between March 2023 and mid-July 2024, including calling for the assassination of two of the Republican-appointed Supreme Court justices so the current Democratic president could appoint their successors.
Instead of toning down his rhetoric after receiving a visit from FBI agents last year, Anastasiou increased the frequency of his messages and their vitriolic language, Reardon said.
Gray-haired and shackled at the ankles above his salmon-colored plastic slippers, Anastasiou wore a yellow prison outfit with ACC printed in black on the back, the initials for the Anchorage Correctional Facility, at the hearing. Born in Greece, he moved to Anchorage 67 years ago. Reardon allowed him to contact his elected officials on other matters like global warming, but said the messages must be reviewed by his lawyers.
Defense attorney Jane Imholte noted Anastasiou is a Vietnam veteran who is undergoing treatment for throat cancer and has no financial means other than his Social Security benefits.
She told the judge that Anastaiou, who signed his own name to the emails, worried about his pets while being detained. She said he only wanted to return home to care for his dogs, Freddie, Buddy and Cutie Pie.
He faces a maximum of 10 years in prison for each count of making threats against a federal judge and up to five years for each count of making threats in interstate commerce if convicted.
Threats targeting federal judges overall have more than doubled in recent years amid a surge of similar violent messages directed at public officials around the country, the U.S. Marshals Service previously said.
In 2022, shortly after the leak of a draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, a man was stopped near the home of Justice Brett Kavanaugh with weapons and zip ties.
ROME (AP) — Canadian and Italian dignitaries on Thursday marked the successful recovery of a photo portrait of Winston Churchill known as “The Roaring Lion,” stolen in Canada and recovered in Italy after a two-year search by police.
At a ceremony at the Canadian Embassy in Rome, Italian carabinieri police handed over the portrait to the Canadian ambassador to Italy, Elissa Goldberg, who praised the cooperation between Italian and Canadian investigators that led to the recovery.
The 1941 portrait of the British leader taken by Ottawa photographer Yousuf Karsh is now ready for the last step of its journey home to the Fairmont Château Laurier, the hotel in Ottawa where it was stolen and will once again be displayed as a notable historic portrait.
Canadian police said the portrait was stolen from the hotel sometime between Christmas 2021 and Jan. 6, 2022, and replaced with a forgery. The swap was only uncovered months later, in August, when a hotel worker noticed the frame was not hung properly and looked different than the others.
Nicola Cassinelli, a lawyer in Genoa, Italy, purchased the portrait in May 2022 at an online Sotheby’s auction for 5,292 British pounds. He says he got a phone call from the auction house that October advising him not to sell or otherwise transfer the portrait due to an investigation into the Ottawa theft.
Cassinelli, who attended Thursday’s ceremony, said he thought he was buying a regular print and quickly agreed to send the iconic Churchill photograph home when he learned its true story.
“I immediately decided to return it to the Chateau Laurier, because I think that if Karsh donated it to the hotel, it means he really wanted it to stay there, for the particular significance this hotel had for him, and for his wife too,” Cassinelli told The Associated Press.
The famous image was taken by Karsh during Churchill’s wartime visit to the Canadian Parliament in December 1941. It helped launch Karsh’s career, who photographed some of the 20th century’s most famed icons, including Nelson Mandela, Albert Einstein and Queen Elizabeth.
Karsh and his wife Estrellita gifted an original signed print to the Fairmont Chateau Laurier in 1998. The couple had lived and operated a studio inside the hotel for nearly two decades.
Geneviève Dumas, general manager of the Fairmont Château Laurier, said on Thursday she felt immensely grateful.
“I would like to extend my deepest gratitude to everybody involved in solving this case, and ensuring the safe return of this priceless piece of history.”
Police arrested a 43-year-old man from Powassan, Ontario, in April and have charged him with stealing and trafficking the portrait. The man, whose name is protected by a publication ban, faces charges that include forgery, theft over $5,000 and trafficking in property obtained by crime exceeding $5,000.
CULIACAN, Mexico (AP) — Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador blamed the United States in part on Thursday for the surge in cartel violence terrorizing the northern state of Sinaloa which has left at least 30 people dead in the past week.
Two warring factions of the Sinaloa cartel have clashed in the state capital of Culiacan in what appears to be a fight for power since two of its leaders were arrested in the United States in late July. Teams of gunmen have shot at each other and the security forces.
Meanwhile, dead bodies continued to pop up around the city. On one busy street corner, cars drove by pools of the blood leading to a body in a car mechanic shop, while heavily armed police in black masks loaded up another body stretched out on a side street of the Sinaloan city.
Asked at his morning briefing if the U.S. government was “jointly responsible” for this violence in Sinaloa, the president said, “Yes, of course … for having carried out this operation.”
The recent surge in cartel warfare had been expected after Joaquín Guzmán López, a son of former Sinaloa cartel leader Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, landed near El Paso, Texas on July 25 in a small plane with Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada.
Zambada was the cartel’s elder figure and reclusive leader. After his arrest, he said in a letter circulated by his lawyer that he had been abducted by the younger Guzmán and taken to the U.S. against his will.
On Thursday afternoon, another military operation covered the north of Culiacan with military and circling helicopters.
Traffic was heavy in Culiacan and most schools were open, even though parents were still not sending their children to classes. Businesses continue to close early and few people venture out after dark. While the city has slowly reopened and soldiers patrol the streets, many families continue to hide away, with parents and teachers fearing they’ll be caught in the crossfire.
“Where is the security for our children, for ourselves too, for all citizens? It’s so dangerous here, you don’t want to go outside,” one Culiacan mother told the Associated Press.
The mother, who didn’t want to share her name out of fear of the cartels, said that while some schools have recently reopened, she hasn’t allowed her daughter to go for two weeks. She said she was scared to do so after armed men stopped a taxi they were traveling in on their way home, terrifying her child.
During his morning press briefing, López Obrador had claimed American authorities “carried out that operation” to capture Zambada and that “it was totally illegal, and agents from the Department of Justice were waiting for Mr. Mayo.”
“If we are now facing instability and clashes in Sinaloa, it is because they (the American government) made that decision,” he said.
He added that there “cannot be a cooperative relationship if they take unilateral decisions” like this. Mexican prosecutors have said they were considering bringing treason charges against those involved in the plan to nab Zambada.
He was echoed by President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum, who said later in the day that “we can never accept that there is no communication or collaboration.”
It’s the latest escalation of tensions in the U.S.-Mexico relationship. Last month, the Mexican president said he was putting relations with the U.S. and Canadian embassies “on pause” after ambassadors criticized his controversial plan to overhaul Mexico’s judiciary by requiring all judges to stand for election.
Still, the Zambada capture has fueled criticisms of López Obrador, who has throughout his administration refused to confront cartels in a strategy he refers to as “hugs not bullets.” On previous occasions, he falsely stated that cartels respect Mexican citizens and largely fight amongst themselves.
While the president, who is set to leave office at the end of the month, has promised his plan would reduce cartel violence, such clashes continue to plague Mexico. Cartels employ an increasing array of tactics, including roadside bombs or IEDs, trenches, home-made armored vehicles and bomb-dropping drones.
