Nod sought to vaccinate elderly, media, politicians, judiciary: Health secretary

SHOT OF HOPE

Nod sought to vaccinate elderly, media, politicians, judiciary: Health secretary

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

Chennai:19.02.2021 

Tamil Nadu vaccinated 20,440 people on Thursday, including 6,086 healthcare workers who returned for the second dose. This took the vaccine recipient tally in the state to 3,29,583.

Meanwhile, public health authorities added 457 fresh cases and discharged 470 patients from the Covid registry. At the end of the day, there were 4,173 people still under treatment. The case tally moved to 8,46,937 and the death toll reached12,444.

From the 662 vaccination centres, the state had the capacity to vaccinate 90,759 people. The state vaccinated 14,813 healthcare providers, 3,500 frontline workers and 2,127 police. According to the directorate of public health, 2.6 lakh healthcare providers out of 5.20 lakh people registered with Cowin portal have received the vaccine so far. Beside this, 36,914 frontline workers and 24,766 policemen are registered with the portal. “Tamil Nadu made a slow start but we are vaccinating close to 20,000 every day now,” said health secretary J Radhakrishnan. “We have sought permission to start vaccinations for the elderly as early as possible, along with politicians irrespective of parties, press/media and judiciary as they come under risk category,” he said. Earlier, former health minister Dr H V Hande took the second dose of the vaccine.

In the last few days, the state has been seeing an isolated cluster of cases from different parts of the state, most of which are from gatherings such as marriage or funerals, he said. “We don’t want to see a repeat of what is happening in countries like Brazil. There has been an increase in cases in Maharashtra. Kerala is still reporting a high number of cases. We can’t afford to ignore masks or social distancing,” he added.

The state was screening passengers from the UK, South Africa or Brazil.

Active cases drop below 200 in Pondy

In all, 311 healthcare workers and 21 frontline workers were given Covid-19 vaccines on Thursday in Puducherry. So far, 6,959 workers have been vaccinated. On Thursday, the territory reported 20 new cases as 23 patients recovered bringing down the number of active cases to 199. TNN