The number of clinics administering the H1N1 vaccine in Ontario will be doubled this week and their hours will be extended to meet demand, health officials said Sunday.

However, officials had a blunt message for people hoping to get a swine flu vaccination this week: if you aren't on the high-priority list, don't expect to be immunized.

"If you are not a member of the priority group, please wait your turn," said Ontario Health Minister Deb Matthews.

"People who are not a member of a priority group won't be able to get the vaccine this week."

Dr. Alrene King, the province's chief medical officer of health, stressed that the delivery of doses would be much smaller this week, which has forced health providers to narrow the scope of their campaign.

(For a list of clinics near you, please visit the Ontario government's flu website at Ontario Health.)

Priority groups include:

  • people with chronic medical conditions (eg., asthma, diabetes) under the age of 65
  • healthy children from six months to less than five years of age
  • care providers and household contacts of persons at high risk who cannot be immunized or may not respond to vaccines
  • health care workers
  • people living in remote areas
  • pregnant women

However, there is concern that some people will jump the queue, causing another bottleneck at immunization clinics this week.

Despite those concerns, King said that health workers wouldn't be actively screening patients and the policy of immunizing only high-risk patients wouldn't be strictly enforced.

"We are appealing to the public to only show up if they belong to those groups," she said.

King also asked that those unsure of their status as high-risk should call their family doctor. She added that several hundred physicians in the Toronto area -- and about 2,000 across the province -- now have the vaccine and can administer it to their patients.

Last week, health centres in Toronto were overrun with massive crowds awaiting immunization. On Saturday, major clinics in Etobicoke and East York were forced to turn away hundreds of people several hours early because of massive demand.

Clinics across the city were closed on Sunday but they were still operating in Halton and York Regions.

Production problems

This week, 189,500 adjuvanted doses of the vaccine will be sent out across the province, in addition to 86,800 unadjuvanted doses, which are primarily intended for pregnant women.

Last week, Ontario received 722,000 doses of the vaccine.

The lower than expected delivery this week is being blamed on the vaccine's producer, Quebec-based GlaxoSmithKline.

King said that GSK ran into production complications when they switched over to making unadjuvanted doses. Adjuvant is a chemical additive used to boost the vaccine's efficacy, but it hasn't been widely tested on pregnant women.

"We are rolling out that vaccine as quickly as we get it," she said.

King iterated that the province would eventually get 13 million doses, meaning that every Ontario resident will have the chance to be immunized before Christmas.

She noted that this year's flu season could last longer than usual, and added that the usual uptick in flu cases at the end of December and again in early March may not occur this year.

"This is a pandemic year, and all bets are off," she said.

Worried parents

Parents have told CTV Toronto stories of anxiety and worry as they struggle to get their children immunized.

Jill Yablonsky wanted to get her four-year-old and two-year-old immunized, and their pediatrician had the vaccine, but was told that all the doses available for this week were spoken for.

Instead she went to the Vaughan public clinic Sunday, and waited for four hours.

"My pediatrician has it but I couldn't get through on the phone and I had to drive to personally make an appointment. And when I had got there it was already booked up for the week so all the doses that they had were already spoken for," she explained.

Other parents had similar problems getting through to their doctor's office.

"There is just a message, they're not answering the phone. We have doctors in the family who can't get access, don't know when their going to be getting access. I feel very upset that they're not bringing it to the schools," mother of three Robyn Mingail said.

Many of the hundreds of parents who waited at the public clinic Sunday said the wait was a no-brainer for alleviating their worry.

"It's a tremendous relief," Yablonsky said of having herself and her children immunized.