A vaccine has been a hope for many locked in, exhausted people grappling with this ongoing, terrible pandemic and now, at last, today we learned an option for vaccination is a lot closer than we thought.

Prime Minister has announced Canada could get its first shipment of a as early as next week. An initial batch of up to 249,000 doses of Pfizer-BioNtech’s COVID-19 vaccine are going to be delivered by the end of December, with millions more on the way in early 2021.

Health Canada has not yet approved the vaccine candidate, but they have indicated they’re getting close. The United Kingdom has approved the vaccine for use and the United States’ Food and Drug Administration is all set to give the green light this week and roll the vaccine out to Americans.

During the pandemic, there has been a lot of buzz, curiosity and questions around vaccines and we have one of Health Canada’s top doctors to shed light. Dr. Supriya Sharma is chief medical advisor at Health Canada and is overseeing the team working on vaccine approvals. Today, she’s joins “This Matters” to talk about how COVID-19 vaccines are being assessed and what it will be like to take one.

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