Quebec Premier Jean Charest appealed for calm, and criticism of the government’s vaccination plan mounted Thursday as people anxious to be vaccinated against the H1N1 virus flooded to vaccination centres in some regions.

In an interview with the French-language LCN television network, the premier asked citizens to respect the priority list that determines who will get the vaccine first.

Amy Fisher was angry she and her three children were unable to be vaccinated after a two-hour wait. (CBC) Health-care and emergency workers; children between six months and five years old; pregnant women and people with chronic illnesses are at the top of the priority list.

More than 1,000 people waited hours for the vaccine at a makeshift clinic set up at a former car dealership in St-Eustache — only to be told there wasn’t enough time, or enough doses, to vaccinate everyone.

After waiting two hours with her three children in tow, Amy Fisher was frustrated at being turned away — and angry that the vaccine was being given to people not on the priority list.

"There is a lot of people that are here and took the day off of work and stuff, that took their kids out of school, that are sick, that need this vaccine and we’re being told 'no you have to come back tomorrow?'"

Though officials at the Lac-des-Deux-Montagnes Health and Social Services Centre were asking people to respect the order of priority — they said people who are willing to wait would not be refused.

Treat mild cases at home

At Montreal’s two children’s hospitals, doctors were also appealing to parents to stay calm and to treat children with mild flu symptoms at home.

Doctors at the Ste. Justine and Children's hospitals say their emergency rooms have been operating at 180 per cent capacity because of a spike in visits from parents worried their children have contracted H1N1.

The hospital ERs have been treating between 250 and 300 children per day, when they have the resources to see about 180, officials said.

Dr. Harley Eisman, medical director of the Montreal Children’s Hospital emergency room, called the situation “fever phobia,” saying parents are so afraid of the flu they are failing to exercize their own good judgment.

"If the public wants us to do our job and really be vigilant and on our toes for that really sick individual — be it a sick individual with H1N1, be it a child who comes in seizing, be it a child who comes in injured from a car accident — then we have to have our resources available for that," said Eisman.

Because of the increase in demand for emergency medical care, the hospitals will not administer H1N1 diagnostic tests for children showing minor flu symptoms, Eisman said.

The call for parents to stay away from hospitals unless it's an emergency comes as the number of confirmed cases of H1N1 continues to rise across the island of Montreal.

A handful of Montreal schools have reported small outbreaks of the swine flu in the last 48 hours, prompting some teachers to ask for priority inoculation.

Criticism of government plan

Teachers and students need to be safeguarded against infection as much as health-care workers, said Serge Laurendeau, president of the Quebec Provincial Teachers' Association.

"You know if you close these schools what do you do with all these students? They have to go back home? Parents are working. They have to stay home," he told CBC News. "You know, it's going to create a lot of problems. That's why the prevention should have been done from the beginning."

The majority of Quebecers will only be receiving their shots in mid-November, despite an earlier rollout for the general population in other provinces.

Health-care workers and the very ill were inoculated this week across Quebec as per the province's flu pandemic strategy.Health Minister Yves Bolduc says the provice has received its fair share of the vaccine. (CBC)

Quebec's Coalition of Doctors for Social Justice says the government's plan to roll out the H1N1 vaccine is inadequate because not enough people will be vaccinated in order to prevent the spread of the flu.

The coalition is calling on the province to make the vaccine available to everyone immediately through doctor and community health clinics.

"We have been giving out the vaccines for years," said coalition co-president Dr. Paul Saba. "Any medications — we've been able to do. "We can drop doses, we can calculate — we are trained as physicians."

But providing family doctors with the vaccine is not an option, said Dr. Alain Poirier, Quebec's director of public health.

Poirier said the province is limited by how many doses of the vaccine it receives each week and would open additional vaccination centers as more doses become available.

Confusion at national assembly

Meanwhile at the national assembly, there was confusion about the number of doses of the vaccine available in the province, with representatives from the health ministry giving contradictory information.

The confusion comes as the Opposition Parti Québecois alleged the province has not received its fair share of the doses of the vaccine available in Canada.

“Health Canada has distributed six million doses so far,” said PQ health critic Bernard Drainville. “But 400,000 out of six million is seven per cent of the total, while Quebec represents 23 per cent of the population.”

During question period, Health Minister Yves Bolduc said the population had so far received 400,000 doses and expected that number to double with a second delivery by the end of the week.

But the minister’s office later confirmed that the province had in fact received 1.3 million doses — including some received prior to the approval of the vaccine by the federal government — a number not taken into account by Bolduc.

That information was contradicted by a spokesperson for the Health Ministry who said that the province had 432,000 doses in stock.

No matter what the number, “Quebec is receiving its 23 per cent,” Bolduc said.

With files from The Canadian Press