Tamil Nadu chief minister MK Stalin on Monday wrote letter again to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to boost the supply of COVID-19 vaccine in a bid to innoculate the people of the state at earliest. This time, Stalin in his letter to the PM Modi urged him to provide an additional allocation of 50 lakh Covid vaccine doses to the state every week.
Chief Minister M K Stalin wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, citing the "resounding success" of two mega Covid vaccination camps held on September 12 and 19, where a cumulative 45-lakh odd jabs were administered to the public across the state.
Considering the state's capacity and the uncovered eligible population, Tamil Nadu has no other option than to continue organising such mega camps at regular intervals in addition to daily vaccinations. Only this can help in overcome the low vaccination numbers achieved in the first four months of the vaccination programme, Stalin said.
"The Government of India has supplied 3.97 crore doses of Covid vaccine and 2.21 crore (0.5 ml) AD syringes to the state, till September 19, 2021. By deriving more doses out of the each 10 ml vial, the State has been able to vaccinate 4.13 crore persons in Government Covid Vaccination Centres. The state realises that despite the levels of vaccinations achieved in the state, it still has a large eligible population which is yet to get vaccinated and this continues to make the state vulnerable for Covid cases," Stalin said.
"In our estimation, the state is easily capable of utilising 50 lakh vaccine doses every week.... I have directed my officers to closely liaise with the officials of the Ministry of Health, Government of India and provide all necessary information to enable the state to get the additional doses." "I hence request you to kindly facilitate in providing the additional doses of 50 lakh Covid vaccines to the state along with equal number of 0.5 ml of AD Syringes or 1 ml/2 ml syringes to the state every week. This will enable the state in vaccinating all the uncovered eligible population by October 31, 2021 apart from administering second dose to persons who are due to receive them," the chief minister said in the letter to the prime minister.
Meanwhile, Tamil Nadu's cumulative coronavirus cases rose to 26.45 lakh with 1,697 positives being reported on Sunday, while 27 people died of the deadly disease taking the toll to 35,337.
The number of recoveries were less than new cases with 1,594 people getting discharged in the last 24 hours, aggregating to 25,93,074 leaving 16,969 active infections, a medical bulletin said.
(With agency inputs)
