Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Tuesday the ban on nonessential travel with the United States will not be lifted until COVID-19 is significantly more under control around the world.

Canada and the U.S. have limited border crossings since March, extending the restrictions each month.

�Until the virus is significantly under more control everywhere around the world, we are not going to be releasing the restrictions at the border,� Trudeau told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

�We are incredibly lucky that trade in essential goods, in agriculture products, in pharmaceuticals is flowing back and forth as it always had,� he said. �It�s just people not traveling, which I think is the important thing.�

Trudeau said although Joe Biden has an �obvious� different approach to the pandemic than President Donald Trump, the situation in the U.S. remains serious and it will take a while to change that.

About 400,000 people crossed the world�s longest international border each day before the pandemic.

About 75% of Canada�s exports go to the U.S. which has more confirmed cases and deaths from COVID-19 than any country in the world.

Trudeau has come under criticism from opposition parties for saying Canadians won�t be among the first to get a vaccine against COVID-19 because the first doses will likely go to citizens of the countries they are made in. Canada doesn�t have mass vaccine-production facilities.

But Trudeau said at a news conference on Tuesday that Canada was among the first to pre-order Moderna�s vaccine candidate and, �We are guaranteed some of Moderna�s first batch if the vaccine is safe and approved.�

�Already, Moderna has submitted their candidate for Health Canada review, as have Pfizer-BioNTech and AstraZeneca-Oxford. And just yesterday, Johnson & Johnson joined this list as the fourth candidate for Health Canada�s review.�

(AP)