Health Minister Ma. Subramanian has sought 50 lakh additional doses of COVID-19 vaccines every week for Tamil Nadu from the Union Health Ministry. This will enable the State government to vaccinate all eligible population by October 31, besides administering the second dose.
Mr. Subramanian wrote to Union Minister for Health Mansukh L. Mandaviya on Monday stating that the State government vaccinated a record 28.91 lakh eligible persons during the mega camp on Sunday. Considering the performance during the camp and the rate of daily vaccination, the State government planned to increase the pace of vaccination. Despite the levels achieved, a large eligible population was still not vaccinated, he said.
The Minister said it was proposed to continue organising such mega camps at regular intervals.“In our estimation, the State was easily capable of utilising 50 lakh vaccine doses every week — five lakh doses a day for six days and 20 lakh doses for a mega camp on the seventh day of the week,” he said.
He urged the Union Health Minister to provide 50 lakh additional doses for the State along with equal number of 0.5 ml of auto disable syringes or one/two ml syringes every week.
He said that till September 12, the Government had supplied 3,81,41,820 doses of COVID-19 vaccines and 1.93 crore AD syringes (0.5 ml) for the State.