The new cases and fatalities come as health officials across the country race to get needles into the arms of the most vulnerable as the virus continues to spread.
However, speaking at a press conference in Ottawa on Tuesday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he was “frustrated” to hear that some COVID-19 vaccines are sitting “in freezers” and are not being administered immediately.
“That’s why we’re going to continue working closely with the provinces, both to deliver vaccines to the provinces and to support them as they need it in terms of getting more vaccines out to vulnerable populations and front line workers as quickly as possible,” Trudeau said.
The prime minister said over the past few weeks provinces have been able to ramp up vaccinations, adding that now that 2021 has arrived, vaccine delivery will “really accelerate.”
Meanwhile, Canada’s Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Theresa Tam said on Tuesday that she has asked the National Advisory Committee on Immunization (NACI) to investigate whether it would be warranted to delay the second doses of a COVID-19 vaccine in a bid to get first doses to more people faster.
“This is a topic of, of course, active discussion,” Tam said.
So far, Canada has approved two vaccines, one made by Pfizer-BioNTech, the other by Moderna.
Both require two doses to be administered weeks apart.
The federal government has faced criticism over its vaccine rollout, as the country falls behind countries including the United States and the United Kingdom in terms of distribution.
Thousands of new cases in the provinces
Concerns over vaccine distribution come as Canada continues to struggle to contain the second wave of the pandemic, and as experts warn the number of new infections could rise dramatically in the weeks following the holidays.
In Ontario, 3,128 new cases and 51 additional deaths were reported. To date, the province has seen 197,360 infections of the virus and 4,730 fatalities.
Meanwhile, in Quebec, 2,508 new infections bring the total case load to 215358, while 62 more fatalities bring the province’s death toll to 8,441.
Saskatchewan reported 153 new cases an health officials confirmed five more people have died.
A total of 16,520 people have contracted the virus in Saskatchewan, and 165 have now died after falling ill.
In Atlantic Canada, 32 new cases were detected.
Health officials in New Brunswick reported 27 new cases, marking the highest daily increase since the pandemic began.
The new cases bring the total number of infections in the province to 662.
In Nova Scotia, meanwhile, three new cases push the province’s case load to 1,508.
Both Newfoundland and Labrador and Prince Edward Island reported one new infection, bringing the total number of COVID-19 cases in the provinces to 392 and 97 respectively.
None of the maritime provinces or Newfoundland and Labrador reported any new fatalities associated with the virus on Tuesday.
Health authorities in Alberta reported 843 more infections and said 26 more people have died after contracting the respiratory illness.
So far the province has seen 106,378 cases and 1,168 deaths associated with COVID-19.
In British Columbia, 428 new cases were detected. Two of those cases are considered to be epidemiologically-linked, meaning they have not yet been confirmed by a laboratory.
Provincial health authorities also said eight more people have died, pushing the total death toll to 954.
Since the pandemic began, 54,147 lab-confirmed cases and 482 epidemiologically-linked cases of the novel coronavirus have been reported in B.C.
No new cases in the territories
None of Canada’s territories reported any new cases of the virus on Monday.
To date, the Northwest Territories has reported 24 infections, while Nunavut has seen 266. The Yukon has reported 65 COVID-19 cases.
No new deaths were reported in the territories on Tuesday either.
Global cases top 86 million
By 7:30 p.m. there were a total of 86,230,870 confirmed cases of the virus worldwide, according to a tally from Johns Hopkins University.
Since the virus was first detected in Wuhan, China in late 2019, it has claimed 1,865,267 lives globally.
The United States remained the viral epicentre, on Tuesday, with more than 21 million infections and over 356,500 fatalities.
— With files from Global News’ Katie Dangerfield and The Canadian Press
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