Chennai: Tamilnadu Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami today urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to supply 20 lakh doses of Covid vaccines to ensure assured stock for the next ten days, besides fast tracking the commissioning of Integrated Vaccination complex at Chengalpattu near here.
In a letter to Modi, he said amid sharp increase in cases so far 47.31 lakh doses of vaccine has been administered and is expected to continue at least two lakh vaccinations per day.
He said with the vaccination gaining pace in the State, he requested Modi to ensure an assured supply of at least ten days consumption of vaccine, of about 20 lakh doses, well in advance to ensure that the vaccination drive in the individual sites are not affected and persons coming for second dose are assured of vaccination on the date and in the site they report.
Palaniswami said it has come to notice that directions are being issued by National and certain State regulators, prioritising supplies by individual manufacturers to certain States and restricting Remdesivir sales only within the State where Remdesivir is being produced.
Noting that this would be very damaging to the availability of such valuable life saving drugs in places of need, he said at this stage, any restrictive orders by individual States should be strictly barred to ensure easy accessibility of Remdesivir.
He also urged the Centre to take up this issue with such States where the companies have their production facilities located.
Palaniswami also appealed to Modi to fast track some pending works at the Integrated Vaccine complex at Chengalpattu, about 65 km from here, for early commissioning of this facility to augment vaccine production.
He said the ‘Integrated Vaccine complex’ located at Chengalpattu in Tamilnadu, a Centrally executed project of national importance, with an aim to ensure vaccine security at a National level, is structurally and functionally ready and awaiting commissioning and validation.
“I am informed that this would be possible, if some pending works can be fast-tracked. I would appeal to you to bring this facility to working condition at the earliest, so as to augment production of Covid vaccines,” Palaniswami said.
Palaniswami said Tamilnadu had been showing a continuous decline in positivity rate, decline in case fatality and also decline in total numbers till the end of February this year.
However, in tune with the national trend, the State has also not been immune to the rapid increase in the Covid infections in March and April.
“The State is witnessing rise in new cases and the daily cases have crossed 10,000 and in Chennai 3,300 in Chennai alone,” he added.
To prevent the spread and quickly control the increase in cases, the State is strictly following the practice of testing, tracing, isolating, treating and also vaccinating the eligible.
The State has been able to restrict the Covid-19 mortality to very low numbers and bring down the case positivity to less than five per cent initially, Palaniswami said.
He said the State has also introduced containment and other disease prevention measures like micro-containment with strict perimeter control and has also introduced measures to reduce the crowds in functions by restricting the numbers,
apart from the announcement of night curfew and Sunday lockdown from 20 April.
The State has also set up static and mobile fever camps, testing centres and screening centres to triage the positive patients to hospital, health centres, care centres or home quarantine.
The State is also emphasising on Covid appropriate behaviour and has a system of penalizing defaulters. A campaign approach has been introduced to create awareness.
He said since 16 March, a total number of 3.94 lakh violators have been identified and a fine amount of Rs.8.35 crore has been collected.