TORONTO • Canada's biggest city has entered lockdown in the latest bid to curb coronavirus infections, with case numbers surging across North America even as US officials said vaccinations could be available within weeks.

Encouraging results from several vaccine trials have raised hopes of a decisive shift in the battle against a disease that has claimed around 1.4 million lives worldwide in the last year.

But see-sawing restrictions and lockdowns in countries that successfully contained earlier outbreaks - shattering lives and economies in the process - have highlighted the ongoing risk of contagion.

Starting yesterday, Toronto has banned private indoor gatherings and capped the size of weddings and funerals for four weeks, with officials warning that hospitals risk being overwhelmed without quick action.

"I've been clear on this - the situation is extremely serious and further action is required," Ontario Premier Doug Ford had told journalists ahead of the lockdown.

Officials had forecast over 400,000 new infections a week across Canada by the end of the year without new restrictions - more than the total number of cases recorded nationwide since the start of the pandemic.

In Montreal, all along the edges of a long boulevard stretches an unprecedented sight in this city: hundreds of tents that have sprung up in a brand new homeless camp since the end of summer, with many of the people thrown out of their homes because of the pandemic.

"Welcome to the trendy encampment of Notre-Dame!" quipped Mr Jacques Brochu, dubbed "the mayor" by his neighbours.

At 60, Mr Brochu said, he found himself homeless and living in a tent on Notre-Dame Street after losing his affordable housing, which was repossessed by its owner. Like his new neighbours, he is preparing for a cold Quebec winter, where temperatures often plunge to minus 20 deg C.

"I manage to heat my tent very well," he said, showing off his small candles. A tarpaulin covering the shelter does the rest.

In the camp in Hochelaga, once a working-class neighbourhood in eastern Montreal that is undergoing gentrification, the long-term homeless rub shoulders with people who have recently lost their jobs, as well as students and workers who have lost their homes.

Mr Guylain Levasseur, 55, who has been homeless for six years and lives in a small caravan, is considered the encampment's "manager".

Under a canopy by his caravan, which is lined with armchairs, he has set up a kitchen of sorts, where people can come and take food or donate it.

"There are people who come to bring us meals every day," he said.

Mr Serge Lareault, Montreal's commissioner for the homeless, said the coronavirus has "thrown hundreds of people onto the streets". "The phenomenon of homeless encampments is new to Montreal," he said.

Last year, there were around 3,000 homeless people in the city, but that number has snowballed since the virus broke out, wreaking havoc on the economy and squeezing affordable housing.

"Our emergency shelters are overflowing, and demand is still growing; there are camps pretty much all around the city," Mr Lareault said.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE