Canadian PM Trudeau Receives First Dose of AstraZeneca Vaccine (Photos)

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau received his first dose of AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine at an Ottawa pharmacy on Friday.

Following his vaccination, Trudeau posed for television cameras and photographers with his thumbs up and then watched as his wife Sophie received her first shot.

Last year, Sophie came down with a mild case of the coronavirus at the start of the pandemic.

Earlier Friday, Trudeau announced a deal with Pfizer for millions of booster shots, as Canada has so far recorded a total of 23,822 deaths and 1,155,834 cases of COVID-19.

The number of daily cases in Canada has doubled this month to 8,600, and health officials earlier mentioned that they could jump again to more than 15,000 by the end of April unless stricter measures were taken as new coronavirus variants spread.

Accordingly, the country will suspend passenger flights coming from India and Pakistan for a month over COVID-19 new strains outbreak.

The decision will be applied only on passenger flights as part of confronting the third wave of the virus.

Canadian Health Minister Patty Hajdu explained that 50 percent of the positive COVID-19 cases detected in the Canadian airports are Indian passengers.

“By eliminating direct travel from these countries, public health experts will have the time to evaluate the ongoing epidemiology of that region and to reassess the situation,” she asserted.