American firm Novavax will become the first to manufacture a Covid-19 vaccine in Canada, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Tuesday, but it will only start supplying doses at the end of a planned domestic rollout.

The announcement comes as Ottawa grapples with delays in deliveries of doses sourced from Europe.

Canada has contracted with Novavax for up to 76 million doses of its Covid-19 vaccine, but its health regulator has yet to approve its use.

"Canada will now be well-placed to produce vaccines for Canadians at home, and in the best case scenario if we don't need it here in Canada, we will be able to offer doses to our allies or partners in developing countries around the world because this pandemic won't be over until everyone has been vaccinated," Trudeau told a news conference.

The Canadian government and Novavax, the prime minister said, signed a memorandum of understanding to set up new production in Montreal. 

The company said its vaccine, which requires two doses, has proven to be 89.3 percent effective in clinical trials.

Construction of the National Research Council's Biologics Manufacturing Centre that will house Novavax's vaccine production is already underway, and is expected to be completed in July.

It will be capable of producing two million doses per month.

The government also announced an agreement with Vancouver-based Precision NanoSystems to build a biomanufacturing centre to make up to 240 million doses of RNA Covid-19 vaccines per year. It is targeted for completion in March 2023.

Trudeau has said that most Canadians would be inoculated against the coronavirus by September.

But recent deliveries of the first two vaccines to get regulatory approval in December -- made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna at plants in Europe -- have been delayed by several weeks.

So far, according to the latest government figures, almost one million Canadians have received a first of two required doses of these two vaccines. Less than 120,000 have received both shots needed for immunity, said public broadcaster CBC.

Trudeau has reassured that the delays are only temporary and that the country's largest ever inoculation program would be back on track by March.

Hedging bets, Canada has placed orders and secured options for more than 400 million doses of vaccines from seven pharmaceutical firms, for its population of 38 million.

As of Tuesday, Canada reported more than 780,000 cases of Covid-19 illness and 20,000 deaths.