Health Canada agrees Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine vials have six doses

Health Canada regulators agree with Pfizer and BioNTech that you can regularly get six doses out of each vial of their COVID-19 vaccine.

Health Canada's chief medical adviser Dr. Supriya Sharma says Canada is amending the label on the vials in Canada, which previously indicated the vials contained five doses.

Now it will say there are six.

The change won't affect how many doses Canada gets as Pfizer already began allocating vials for Canada's shipments based on each containing six rather than five.

Canada's contract with Pfizer and BioNTech is to buy 40 million doses this year, with four million to be shipped by the end of March, and most of the rest before the end of September.

The United States, Europe and the World Health Organization all made that change last month.

Canada is expected to receive 4 million doses of the Pfizer and BioNTech vaccine by the end of next month.