TN health experts on tenterhooks as vaccination drive slows down

TN health experts on tenterhooks as vaccination drive slows down

Don’t Have Vaccines; Have Written To Centre: TN

Pushpa.Narayan@timesgroup.com

Chennai:25.05.2021

The pace of vaccination against Covid-19 has slowed down drastically across the state over the last 15 days, worrying public health experts as a large population including those in the vulnerable category remain exposed. On Sunday, less than 30,000 people took the jab, compared to 99,529 on May 6. The highest ever single-day vaccinations were recorded on April 15 when more than 2.1 lakh people got it.

Between May 17 and 23, the average number of people receiving the vaccine daily came down to 48,566 compared to nearly 70,000 on May 15 and 69,574 on May 16. “We don’t have a choice,” said health minister Ma Subramanian. “We don’t have the vaccines. The vaccine centres allotted covers around 6.4% of our population (8.3 crore). We have written to the Centre seeking more vaccines. A preferential allocation was given to other states. Gujarat received vaccines to cover 16.4% of its 6.3 crore population,” he said.

Since January, Tamil Nadu received 80.3 lakh doses of Covaxin and Covishield from the Centre as part of the national wide drive to vaccinate healthcare providers, frontline workers, senior citizens and people above 45 years. “Of this, we received 1.9 lakh doses on Monday morning. So, of the 78.4 lakh doses we used 72.4 lakh doses until Sunday. We had around 1 lakh doses in regional and district vaccine stores when we rolled out the programme on Sunday morning after discounting wastage of close to 5 lakh doses in the first wave for various reasons.”

With increase in demand, vaccine wastage has dropped from nearly 13% in February to less than 5% now, he said. Ironically, when people came to the centres, there were no vaccines. As a result, the health department reduced vaccine sessions from around 3,000 earlier this month to 2,500 this week.

At a recent medical expert committee meeting, public health experts including WHO chief scientist Dr Soumya Swaminathan asked the state to ramp up vaccination.

On Monday, the 1.9 lakh doses of Covishield received were disbursed to the district and regional vaccine centres. “We don’t stock vaccines at warehouses. They are distributed to the field so we can vaccinate as many people as possible quickly,” said joint director (immunisation) Dr K Vinay Kumar.

On Monday, many vaccine centres continued to offer Covaxin only as a second dose. Many who came for vaccinations in districts by late afternoon were turned back due to shortage. On Monday, the state vaccinated 92,614 people including 55,623 people in the 18 to 44 age group. On Sunday, around 8532 people in the same age group took their vaccines.