TN receives 4.2L Covishield doses amid shortage

CHENNAI: After Health Minister Ma Subramanian urged the Centre to allocate more vaccines as the State’s stock was likely to get over on Tuesday, Tamil Nadu received a total of 4,20,570 more doses of Covishield from the Union government on Tuesday evening. The consignment of Covishield arrived from the central storage in Pune in 36 boxes under the Central Government quota for those aged 45 and above besides three boxes of 36,000 doses for a private hospital. In total, 4,56,570 doses of Covishield arrived in Tamil Nadu. The doses sent to the State government will be administered to people aged 45 and above.

The Centre’s supply was sanctioned after Subramanian on Tuesday morning said that the State would suspend vaccination at government centres till June 5 after exhausting available stocks on Tuesday.

After receiving the 4.20 lakh doses, the Health Minister said, “If we had not received the vaccines, we would not have had adequate doses to continue the inoculation drive.” The vaccines will be distributed to all districts based on the population.

About 42 lakh doses of vaccines are expected to arrive in June in a phased manner. The State has received 1.01 crore vaccines, and the drive in Tamil Nadu has now improved.

He added that the State will hear from the Centre on production of vaccines at the Integrated Vaccine Complex in Chengalpattu this week. Subramanian said that MP TR Baalu had met Central ministers over the approval for the production of vaccines at the Chengalpattu Vaccine Complex and the officials had asked for a week to revert.

The Health Minister also informed that so far, a total of 518 cases of mucormycosis have been reported in Tamil Nadu and 17 deaths have occurred over this. The expert task force committee formed to look into the cases is working on how these can be prevented.