Lambton's medical officer of health says an uptick in local COVID-19 cases lately could push the area to a higher level in Ontario's colour-coded response framework.
Dr. Sudit Ranade told Sue Storr on CHOK (103.9 FM, 1070 AM) Wednesday morning that a number of the new cases are related to existing outbreaks.
"A few of which have really taken off, so the numbers are climbing up, we'll have to see what happens over the next several days," said Ranade. "Obviously the province will be looking at it closely to decide whether we stay in orange or whether we have to bump ourselves up to red."
According to the Lambton Public Health website, the area's incidence rate per 100,000 population increased the week of February 7 to 13 to 60, from 28 the week before.
The provincial government has said that after returning to the framework, public health regions will stay in their level for at least two weeks at which time the government will assess the impact of public health and workplace safety measures to determine if each region should stay where they are or be moved to a different level. Lambton returned to the framework at the orange-restrict level as of Tuesday, February 16.
Dr. Ranade said they're expecting more vaccine shipments next week.
"The numbers keep kind of fluctuating but we're planning to get some more next week. I'm hopeful that we'll actually be getting both Pfizer and Moderna next week and if that's true, then we can start to do a slightly wider rollout."
A total of 1,158 long-term care, high-risk retirement home and Indigenous Elder Care residents have received their first doses of vaccine so far.
-With files from Sue Storr
