OTTAWA (Reuters) - The Canadian military will play a leading role in helping distribute coronavirus vaccines to far-flung areas when doses start arriving early next year, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Friday.
Officials face the massive challenge of administering the vaccine across what is the world's second-largest country by area, much of it sparsely populated and remote.
Trudeau said the military would form part of a special national operations center to coordinate the logistics and distribution of vaccines.
"The Canadian Armed Forces will assist on planning, including to meet challenges like cold storage requirements, data-sharing, and reaching Indigenous and rural communities," Trudeau told a regular briefing.
"Canada is well prepared for large-scale rollouts of vaccines, but this will be the biggest immunization in the history of the country. We must reach everyone who wants a vaccine, no matter where they live," he said.
Canada is in the middle of a second wave and daily cases regularly hit record highs despite increasing efforts by the 10 provinces to clamp down on businesses and limit the number of people at gatherings.
"We're in some of the toughest days of this pandemic," said Trudeau, describing the expected arrival of the vaccines as a light at the end of the tunnel.
Canada could approve Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine "around December," about the same time as the United States and the European Union, a senior official at Canada's drug regulator said on Thursday.
(Reporting by David Ljunggren; Editing by Alistair Bell)
