Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau won’t lift the ban on nonessential travel with the United States until COVID-19 is “significantly more under control everywhere in the world.” Canada and the U.S. have had limited border crossings since March.
“Until the virus is significantly under more control everywhere around the world, we are not going to be releasing the restrictions at the border,” Trudeau told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. “We are incredibly lucky that trade in essential goods, in agriculture products, in pharmaceuticals is flowing back and forth as it always had,” he said. “It’s just people not travelling, which I think is the important thing.”
Trudeau has come under fire from opposition parties for saying Canadians won’t be among the first to get a vaccine against COVID-19 because those first doses will be going to the citizens of the countries they are made in and Canada doesn’t have mass vaccine-production facilities. But Trudeau said on Tuesday that Canada was among the first to pre-order Moderna’s vaccine and, “We are guaranteed some of Moderna’s first batch if the vaccine is safe and approved.”
