Tamil Nadu is planning to hold an ambitious Covid vaccination drive across the state on September 12, state Health Minister Ma Subramanian announced today. Nearly 10,000 camps will be set up for the inoculation drive as the state aims to vaccinate 20 lakh people on a single day.
"We are making arrangements to organise these camps on September 12. A meeting to discuss the required arrangements will be held with district Collectors, joint directors and deputy directors of health services," Mr Subramanian said.
Although the daily vaccine coverage in the state crossed six lakh last week, the state faces the challenge of vaccine hesitancy as even though the inoculation rate increased from January to July, it has remained steady in the month of August.
Another challenge that the state aims to tackle through the massive vaccination drive is- increase in the number of infections in the neighboring state of Kerala. Through this campaign, the state aims to achieve 100 per cent vaccination in nine districts along the Tamil Nadu- Kerala border. Kerala has been consistently reporting an increase in infections with the state logging 19,688 new COVID-19 cases and 135 related deaths today which took the active caseload in the state to 2,38,782 cases while the death count mounted to 21,631.
"I'd personally be reviewing all these nine border districts that day. We are also appealing to teachers to join hands" Mr Subramanian said.
To ramp up vaccination coverage, Tamil Nadu government had requested for more vaccines from the Centre and the state received 19,22,080 vaccine doses yesterday- its largest supply of vaccines so far. With this the state now has 33 lakh vaccine doses in hand.
Currently, only 11.7 per cent of the state's population has been fully vaccinated while 46.7 per cent of the population has received one dose.
Tamil Nadu reported 1,592 new Covid cases and 18 related deaths, according to the health bulletin issued on Sunday. The recoveries outnumbered the new infections in the state as 1,607 people recovered from the infection during the same period.
As of now, the state has 16,282 active COVID-19 cases.
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