BATON ROUGE - As of Monday (Jan. 25) morning, nearly 20 million Americans have received their first dose of a COVID-19 vaccination.

While that's a fairly large number, it doesn't include the thousands of citizens who are eligible to receive the life-saving vaccine, but have yet to be inoculated.

Many of Louisiana's COVID vaccine-eligible citizens who haven't received a shot yet say they're being told they may have to be patient for quite some time.

Louisiana's health experts indicate that, at the moment, there simply aren't enough doses of the vaccine to administer the first shot to everyone who needs it in a timely fashion.

Dr. Melissa Love of Oschner told WBRZ that a number of patients have come to her, requesting a vaccine and she's had to repeatedly explain that it simply isn't available at this time.

She said, "It's not even up to us, I always have to reiterate that. People a lot of times are saying, "I want my shot." It's not up to us. It's actually up to the governors for each individual state. But it's really a supply issue right now. It's having enough of the vaccine to administer it. "

Though the current shortage in vaccine supply is an issue, Louisiana health officials are assuring the public that they're working to address the problem. 

CLICK HERE for additional information from Louisiana Department of Health on the state's vaccination process.