After the Union Health Ministry issued instructions to the States that they should not disclose information on the stocks of vaccines, Minister for Medical and Family Welfare Ma. Subramanian said giving people accurate information was the right thing to do.
“They have said that both the Union Health Ministry and the State Health Departments should not disclose the position of vaccine stocks. If we do not tell, the people will not know. They will end up waiting in queues for the vaccines and get disappointed. It is only appropriate to state facts, and that is what we have been doing,” he told reporters on Thursday.
Except Chennai, no other district has vaccines (as on Thursday morning). “The city has 1,060 doses. Of the 37 districts, 36 do not have vaccines,” he said. The State is expecting 6.5 lakh doses from the Centre’s pool in two days, he said.
As many as 85,000 doses of Covaxin against the State government’s order arrived in Chennai later in the day.
He said there was no plan to shift the Tamil Nadu Government Multi Super-Speciality Hospital to the new building, planned on the campus of the King Institute of Preventive Medicine.
On inspecting the Tamil Nadu Medical Services Corporation, the Minister said the State had adequate stock of drugs and other essential protective gear for the pandemic.
“Initially, there was a huge shortage of Remdesivir. We have purchased nearly 9.5 lakh Remdesivir vials, of which 5.75 lakh have been supplied to government hospitals. Private hospitals were given 1.25 lakh vials,” he said.
The State has adequate stocks of PPE kits for four weeks. As many as 3.5 lakh PPE kits, 15 lakh N95 masks and 75 lakh triple-layer masks are available. There were 115 CT scan machines in government hospitals. “In May, 1,43,530 scans were taken in these hospitals. This is the highest number of scans taken in a month so far,” he said.
The Minister also visited the Tamil Nadu State AIDS Control Society (Tansacs). Among others, Health Secretary J. Radhakrishnan, Managing Director of TNMSC P. Umanath and project director of Tansacs Deepak Jacob were present.
