Lambton's medical officer of health says they're dealing with an anticipated "vaccine crunch" that's precluding them from running as many clinics as they'd like to right now.
Dr. Sudit Ranade, during a media briefing Thursday, said they're not scheduling clinics on some days.
"In the next couple of weeks, we've talked about a vaccine crunch, in terms of the supply and we are experiencing that, so we're going to see a dip in our vaccine allocations, so we're running fewer clinics than we normally would," said Ranade. "People might have expected that there would be a day where we would run a clinic and they might not see that day in the booking system, that's because we're not scheduling clinics on those days because we haven't got the vaccine to run them."
Dr. Ranade believes Sarnia-Lambton should have been included in the province's hot spot regions where additional vaccine supplies could be allocated. He said the health unit is working with Lambton County to ask the province for more vaccines but he doesn't know how successful that will be, because every area wants more vaccine.
"The province has a lens on what are the under-represented areas in terms of giving them vaccine. I think certainly areas in the north were not getting as much vaccine as areas in the south and so they're trying to balance a lot of those considerations and get everyone back on a level playing field where, by population, they've all received a certain percentage or number of doses."
If Lambton gets more vaccine, Ranade said they'll be able to open more slots in the system.
"But until then, you can really only open up appointments for vaccine that you have available or that you expect reasonably to have available."
A total of 28,495 doses of COVID-19 vaccine have been administered in Lambton County so far. That represents 25 per cent of the eligible population that's received one or more doses.
Further information on phase 2 of Lambton Public Health's vaccine roll-out can be found here.
-With files from Colin Gowdy