Tamil Nadu Health Secretary J Radhakrishnan on Tuesday said that there was no vaccine stock in 34 districts out of 38 districts in the state. According to the schedule from the Health Department, the state awaits the next consignment of 63,370 doses of Covaxin on Wednesday and 40,000 doses of Covaxin on Thursday. The state is also awaiting the delivery of 3,65,800 doses of Covishield vaccine on Friday. Talking to reporters, Tamil Nadu Health Minister Ma Subramanian said, “It is true that we do not have vaccine stocks. The Union government should give 36.5 lakh doses of vaccines for this month and they have said that they will distribute 6.5 lakh vaccines between June 9 and June 13.”
“The vaccines will be distributed to the state based on a schedule and once we receive the schedule and vaccines, we will distribute them to the districts. The people in Tamil Nadu are aware about the pros of vaccines and are ready to get inoculated. So as we get vaccines, we will start camps and inoculate people,” he said. The state has so far received 1.01 crore doses of vaccines of which 97.5 lakh doses have been administered, he said.
On June 1, the Tamil Nadu government had announced that they were suspending the vaccination drive from June 2 to June 5 due to the unavailability of vaccines. However, after the announcement, the Union government sent 4.20 lakh doses of Covishield to Tamil Nadu. The state was inoculating people with the received vaccines but started reporting low vaccine stock from Saturday. Many people who visited the vaccination centers in districts including Coimbatore, Trichy and Karur were turned down due to the low vaccine stock.
Meanwhile, J Radhakrishnan in a separate press meet said, “After lockdown, the cases have reduced in 25 districts. However, nine districts are reporting an increase in the cases. Four of the nine districts are reporting high caseloads and we are discussing how to bring down the cases more swiftly.”