About 17 lakh doses of COVID-19 vaccines will be available for the State’s second mega vaccination camp to be held on Sunday.
Health Minister Ma. Subramanian had said on Friday that the State had not received as many vaccine doses as it had expected. For the last mega vaccination camp held on September 12, as many as 29 lakh doses of vaccines were available in hand. It may be recalled that the State had achieved a coverage of nearly 28.91 lakh during the camp. Earlier this week, he had written to the Union Health Minister, seeking an allocation of 50 lakh additional doses of vaccines this week — five lakh a day for six days and 20 lakh for the mega camp on the seventh day.
“The target is to vaccinate 15 lakh people. A total of 20,000 booths are being set up. We will have vaccines in the range of 17 lakh for the mega camp. We have told officials to exhaust whatever stock is available,” Health Secretary J. Radhakrishnan said.
Officials said the Union government was already supplying additional doses, which the State was utilising from time to time.
T. S. Selvavinayagam, Director of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, said they had distributed the vaccine doses to all health unit districts on the basis of both population and daily vaccination performance.
Mr. Radhakrishnan added that special focus was being given to the border districts. Districts such as Chennai, Coimbatore, Tiruppur and Namakkal were also being given special attention, he added.
