Karen Froese and right Abby Gibb set up lawn chairs while waiting in the long line outside of the flu clinic in the Avenida Village shopping centre to get their H1N1 flu on Friday Oct. 30 in Calgary. Photograph by: Dean Bicknell , Calgary Herald

OTTAWA — The giant lineups and frustration that dominated the first week of the biggest immunization program in history is expected to get worse next week, as health officials concede that public demand is exceeding the number of doses and the staff available to administer the vaccine.

Provinces reported clinic shutdowns Friday and federal officials painted a gloomy outlook for the week ahead because they have received only one-fifth the amount of vaccine that they had expected to distribute nationwide.

The manufacturer, GlaxoSmithKline, has fallen behind because it is making a special vaccine for pregnant women, Chief Public Health Officer Dr. David Butler-Jones told a news conference.

Word of the production slowdown came as the World Health Organization reversed its earlier position and said Friday there is now no reason for pregnant women to favour the special version being made exclusively for them.

GlaxoSmithKline has switched its one production line back to making the regular vaccine, but it will take some time to ramp up to the target of producing three million doses per week.

Butler Jones said that officials learned Thursday they will have only 400,000 new doses to ship out next week and another 225,000 doses reserved for pregnant women — far short of the six million that have been distributed thus far.

Butler-Jones, who had maintained until the last few days that there would be plenty of vaccine for everyone, cautioned that the H1N1 campaign is being delivered in "real time" so there are many unprecedented challenges that were not anticipated.

"We're producing it, testing it, distributing it, giving it to people all at the same time," he said.

"It is something that nobody has ever actually had to deal with before in this kind of context. It's the largest immunization campaign in history."

The goal, he said, is to have Canadians who want the H1N1 shot immunized by Christmas.

His appeal for patience was little comfort in many quarters, where Canadians were turned away by the hundreds as clinics ran out of time and supply on Friday and provinces scrambled to revamp their strategies.

Ontario's chief medical officer said plans to open up clinics to the general public next week have been put on hold and that the province will continue next week to administer shots only to at-risk residents — children under six, pregnant women, seniors, health workers and people with chronic conditions.

Several other provinces say they will do the same, including Nova Scotia, Quebec, and Saskatchewan.

As H1N1 clinics extend their hours or shut their doors early, complaints persisted about the distribution system, which has been confined to only a small number of large venues rather than smaller outlets such as doctors' offices.

Lindsay Harris, standing in line in Toronto with her 10-month-old daughter, Juliet, was not impressed by the long wait in the rain.

"The fact that they've known about the swine flu and they've been warning us about an outbreak for months now, and the fact that they just don't seem to be prepared for this vaccination, is mind-boggling," she said.