The swine flu vaccination program continues across the province on Friday, but the government has had to step in to calm people down after a day of frustration and long lineups resulting from a limited supply of the H1N1 vaccine.

"I tell the population that everyone will be able to have the vaccine but (...) there is some limitation," health minister Yves Bolduc said on Thursday.

He made the comments on the same day that more than a thousand people had to be turned away from the lineup outside of a St. Eustache vaccination centre, north of Laval.

At this stage, only health and emergency workers, those with chronic illnesses or those with children under the age of five are supposed to be getting their shots.

But among the roughly 2000 people who showed up at the vaccination centre, many were healthy adults.

The centre was also meant to cater only to people from the area, but people from Laval and Montreal flocked to St. Eustache because they did not want to wait for the vaccination availability in their own cities.

The centre in St. Eustache is only prepared to dole out 800 vaccinations each day.

It will be open again Friday from noon to 8 p.m, and will now be asking people for identification to verify they are from St. Eustache.

Limited vaccine supply

Just as demand for the new swine flu vaccine reaches a near frenzy, federal health officials are announcing there will be temporary shortages of the vaccine, as the manufacturer halts production lines to focus on creating vaccine for pregnant women.

Shipments to the provinces and territories would slow because vaccine supplier, GlaxoSmithKline was asked to temporarily shift production to non-adjuvanted vaccine, the federal government agency said in a statement.

If all goes well with production and delivery, by next week about 225,000 doses of unadjuvanted vaccine will be sent out to all the provinces.

But it remains unclear how the production switchover will slow delivery of the regular vaccine to the provinces over the next two weeks. Some reports say some local health units are already considering cancelling some flu shot clinics.

Quebec reacts

Quebec's public health agency has tight controls on the vaccine because of the limited supply, and because it wants to give priority to high risk patents.

Earlier this week, a vaccination centre on the South Shore opened its doors to the public and said it wouldn't refuse anyone.

The result of that open door policy was that the vaccination centre ran short of supplies.

Now it's following the vaccination schedule set out by the province, meaning health-care workers have priority.

With files from The Canadian Press and CTV.ca News Staff