Dec. 15 (UPI) -- The government of Canada has inoculated its first citizens against the coronavirus, officials said.
Health Minister Patty Hajdu announced during a press conference on Monday out front of the Maimonides Geriatric Center in Montreal, Quebec, that the rollout of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine has begun.
"It's really good news for Canada, it's really good news for Quebec, it's really good for everybody across the country," she said.
Gisele Levesque, a resident of a Quebec City long-term care facility, was the first person in the country to receive the injection, Quebec Premier Francois Legault said.
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"We see the light at the end of the tunnel," he tweeted. "Keep hoping!"
Residents of long-term care facilities and healthcare workers will be the first in the province to receive the vaccine as part of the rollout plan, he said.
Hajdu said a patient at the facility who had received the injection told her the vaccine meant that life could start to return to normal.
"She talked about these last eight or nine months living in isolation and how this was the first step to her regaining her connectedness to people," she said, adding the vaccine is "a really important tool to getting back to normal."
She told reporters she also spoke with frontline workers at the center who told her of the "worry and anxiety" they have experienced amid the pandemic about infecting their own families when they'd go home from work.
"Obviously our nation's been under trauma, so I see this as the first step forward into the light and moving back into a place of confidence where Canadians can start to see the beginning of the end of this thing and that's why it's such an important day," she said.
In Ontario, the University Health Network said personal support worker Anita Quidangen became the province's first person to receive the life-saving jab at the Michener Institute for Education in the country's most populated city of Toronto.
"These past nine months have been challenging in so many ways, but no more so than for healthcare workers across the continuum of care -- especially those dedicated colleagues who care for seniors in long-term care," Dr. Kevin Smith, president and CEO of UHN, said in a statement. "With this vaccine, we turn the corner and begin a new era in the fight against COVID-19 -- an era with the effective tools to beat this relentless enemy."
Dr. Theresa Tam, the chief public health officer of Canada, said they anticipate up to 249,000 doses of the vaccine to be administered in December as part of "one of the most complex vaccination programs in our history."
In a statement on Sunday, she said officials will be putting forth every effort to ensure all Canadians have access to the vaccine in 2021.
Canada began inoculating its citizens as the first Americans received the vaccine and a week after Britain began its vaccine campaign.
The life-saving jab comes nearly a year after health officials diagnosed Canada's first COVID-19 infections in late January. Since then, health officials in the country have reported more than 468,800 infections, including some 13,550 deaths.
