Provincial health officials are trying to crack down on queue jumpers as clinics and doctors offices across the country continue to run short of the H1N1 vaccine.
On Monday, the prioritized rollout of vaccine expanded to include frontline health-care workers, children between six months and five years of age, and caregivers of children under six months.
At a clinic at Coquitlam Centre, patients waited up to two-and-a-half hours in line to get the vaccine. Public health nurses monitored the lineup making sure it was truly only high-risk people receiving the precious doses.
"Health nurses are checking with people in the line and letting them know who is eligible for the high priority groups," Fraser Health's Ray Thorpe said.
"Those who aren't in the group are being asked to come back when we open to the general public."
Monday is the first day Fraser Health offered public H1N1 clinics despite the fact other health regions, including Vancouver's, opened their doors a week ago. Thorpe says this is intentional because the area's makeup has a different population and geography than Vancouver.
"This is always been the plan to get at the targeted population," Thorpe said.
But a vaccine shortage may mean the general public may have to wait as long as New Years to get the vaccine.
Communities across the country can't keep up with public demand because GlaxoSmithKline can't keep up the supply. The situation is different in the U.S. where the population is served by five suppliers.
By week's end, British Columbia should have given out 800,000 doses but after that the number dropped dramatically.
"Next week, however, we will expect to have only about 63,000 doses on hand," provincial health officer Perry Kendall told CTV News.
"This puts a strain on our ability to run clinics in that week."
Federal Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq urged Canadians to be patient.
"This is the largest immunization campaign in the history of Canada. Thirty-three million people cannot receive vaccine in seven days," she told CTV's Question Period.
Week 1 of the vaccine rollout targeted high-risk groups, including pregnant women, people under 65 with chronic health conditions, and people living in remote areas. They are still able to get shots, if they haven't gotten one yet.
B.C. is in the midst of what officials have deemed a "second wave" of the H1N1 pandemic, and officials say it appears to be peaking.
However, officials expect a third wave.
"Influenza tends to wax and wane. And we also expect that we're going to have a third wave, after Christmas sometime, probably in the period starting in February," said Dr. Monika Naus of the BC Centre for Disease Control.
She said it's hard to predict how hard the third wave will hit.
With files from CTV British Columbia's Julia Foy