Chennai: Tamilnadu Health Minister Ma.Subramanian has urged the Centre to additionally allocate another one crore doses of Covid vaccines to the State.
The additional allocation sought by the State government was to meet the needs of the 10,000 mega vaccination camps to be organised by the State government on 12 Sepember targeting to inoculate 20 lakh people.
In a letter to Union Health Minister Mansukh L Mandaviya, he sought additional doses of one crore vaccines along with an equal number of 0.5 ml Auto Disable (AD) syringes or one ml/two ml syringes for the proposed mega camp.
This is in addition to the already-committed 1.04 crore vaccines for government vaccination centres, he said.
He said as a next step to increase the vaccination drive in the State, it was decided to conduct the mega camp on a weekly basis, starting from Sunday to cover the left-out unvaccinated eligible population aged above 18 years in the State without diluting the daily vaccination drive.
Subramanian said till September five, the Union government has supplied 3,31,84,824 doses of vaccines and 1,83,95,400 (0.5 ml) AD syringes to the State.
The State has about 6.06 crore eligible population aged above 18 years to be covered with two doses of the vaccines. Till September five, the State has covered 2.63 crore beneficiaries with the first dose, while 68.91 lakh people were administered both the doses in government vaccination centres, he added.
He also pointed out that the State government was administering about five lakh doses per day for the last seven days.
Citing the massive spike in cases in neighbouring Kerala, Subramanian stressed on the importance of vaccinating all eligible people in nine districts bordering Kerala.
Subramanian said during his earlier interaction, the Union Minister asked the State to aim and ensure 100 per cent vaccination for the left-out eligible population on a priority basis in all nine bordering districts of Coimbatore, Dindigul, Kanniyakumari, Tenkasi, The Nilgiris, Theni, Tirunelveli, Tiruppur and Virudhunagar.
It is estimated that 65.76 lakh population in these nine districts have to be given the first dose of vaccine, he said.