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Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says the country is at a “fork in the road” as it deals with rising COVID-19 numbers, hours after officials released death projections for Canada.

In a best-case scenario, Canada’s total COVID-19 deaths can range from 11,000 to 22,000, public health officials revealed Thursday in their projection modelling.

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“The path we take is up to us,” Trudeau says outside of Rideau Cottage in Ottawa. “It will take months of continued, determined effort.”

“We will not be coming back to our former normal situation; we can’t do that until we have developed a vaccine and that could take 12 to 18 months,” Trudeau said. “We don’t exactly know how long — we hope it’s earlier rather than later.”

The best-case scenario figure requires keeping the spread of infections to just 2.5 to five per cent of Canadians. Based on the modelling, to get there Canada will have to keep a high level of physical distancing measures in place for a while. In the bad scenarios, where infections reach up to 70 to 80 percent of the population, deaths go well over 300,000.

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