Thread by @JPTasker

New — Trudeau announces Air Canada, WestJet, Sunwing, and Air Transat are cancelling air service to all Caribbean destinations and Mexico starting this Sunday until April 30th.

"They will be making arrangements with their customers who are currently on a trip in these regions to organize their return flights," Trudeau says of the airlines.

"With the challenges we currently face with COVID-19, both here at home and abroad, we all agree that now is just not the time to be flying," Trudeau says.

In addition to the pre-boarding test that is already required, Trudeau says in the coming weeks the government will be introducing mandatory PCR testing at the airport for people returning to Canada.

Travellers will then have to wait for up to three days at an approved hotel for their test results, at their own expense which is expected to be more than $2000, Trudeau says.

Those travellers with negative test results can quarantine at home under significantly increased surveillance and enforcement, Trudeau says.

Those with positive tests will be immediately required to quarantine in designated government facilities.

BREAKING — Canada's vaccination campaign is facing yet another hurdle in the race to inoculate people against the deadly novel coronavirus with the announcement today that Moderna will delay some shipments of its product next month.

The Massachusetts-based company was set to send some 230,400 shots to Canada next week, with 249,600 shots to follow three weeks later, but those forecasts have now been up-ended, a testament to just how uncertain the government's vaccine projections have become.

Moderna is expected to ship between 20-25 per cent less product to Canada in February than originally planned, much like the delays that France and Italy also reported today after conversations with the drug maker. Next week's shipment has been revised down to 180,000 doses.

The delays mean tens of thousands of Moderna doses will be punted to a later date as COVID-19 related deaths near the 20,000 mark.

"This temporary delay doesn’t change the fact that we will still receive 2 million doses of the Moderna vaccine before the end of March, as we’ve been saying for months," Trudeau says. (March deliveries will have to ramp up significantly.)