Chennai, May 28 (IANS): The Tamil Nadu state government has deputed three IAS officers to monitor various coordinating agencies to curb the spread of Covid-19 pandemic in Erode, Coimbatore and Tirupur districts of the state, officials said.

M.A Siddique and C. Samayamoorthy have been named as the monitoring officers for Coimbatore and Tiruppur, respectively, and R. Selvaraj is the monitoring officer for Erode district, a press release from the Chief minister's office said.

The decision was taken at a high-level meeting of officials chaired by Chief minister MK Stalin in which collectors of Erode, Tiruppur, Coimbatore, Salem, Madurai and Trichy participated virtually.

The release, issued on Thursday night, said that the Chief Minister had instructed the district collectors to consolidate their efforts in the coming week or two to ensure that the spread of the virus is controlled.

Stalin also directed the district collectors to increase the vaccination drive in their respective districts. While Coimbatore and Salem districts are having a higher vaccination percentage of people in the age group of 18-44, the Chief Minister urged the collectors of other districts to increase the vaccination drive in their districts.

The Chief Minister also said that owing to focused and intense efforts taken in Chennai, the spread of the virus in the city and its neighbouring areas are under control to a certain extent, the release said.

Stalin also called upon the district collectors to prevent the spread of the virus in their respective districts with focused efforts and that this would lead to a prevention of the spread of the contagious disease in the state.