Official reports have confirmed that Health Canada has gone ahead and shortened the shelf life of adjuvanted Swine Flu, or H1N1, vaccine, which means that most of the 47,000 unused doses of vaccine in Saskatchewan will be expiring next week

"Then a number of doses expire in May. We're just sorting out how we will use them", said Dr. Moira McKinnon, Saskatchewan's Chief Medical Health Officer.

Dr. McKinnon, on late Thursday night, heard that Health Canada, after a thorough consultation with the vaccine manufacturer GlaxoSmithKline, pulled down the expiry date of the nation's adjuvanted H1N1 vaccine.

The revision, however, is not safety-related but mostly due to a fall in the strength of the H1N1 antigen in some particular lots.

Dr. McKinnon shared that the antigen has managed to destabilize much more quickly than previously expected, and therefore, it no longer in a sufficient enough quantity to develop an immune response.