Chennai, Jun 29 (IANS): Tamil Nadu, which stopped vaccination on Monday in many parts of the state including Chennai, is still facing a shortage of vaccines for inoculation on Tuesday as well.

While the state received 2 lakh doses of vaccine on Monday evening, the possibility of an accelerated vaccination in the state is remote.

Tamil Nadu minister for medical and family welfare, Ma Subramanian, in a statement on Tuesday, said that while a high level of awareness has been created in the state, even among the tribes and the illiterate people, the shortage of vaccines is creating a letdown of the good work done by the public health department and other departments of the state.

Tamil Nadu is expected to receive 75 lakh doses of vaccines in July and the state has now touched a vaccination level of 4.3 lakh vaccines a day during the last week of June except for Monday when it could vaccinate a minimum percentage of the population.

Joint Director of immunization, Government of Tamil Nadu, Dr K. Vinay Kumar told IANS, "We have vaccinated more people than the doses we have received as our nurses have drawn 12 doses from a vial instead of 10 as manufacturers always pack 1ml additional in each vial and this extra ml is used to vaccinate more people as our nurses have learned to make use of that also. This has led to reduce in wastage of vaccines also."

Across the state in Tamil Nadu, 6.06 crore people above the age of 18 years are eligible for vaccination and the target is 12.12 crore doses. Nilgiris have completed 23 per cent of its dosage target, Chennai 22 per cent of its target, Virudhanagar 17 per cent, and Coimbatore 16 per cent of their dosage targets and that according to a report on the percentage of vaccination released by the State Public Health Department, Tamil Nadu has completed 12 per cent of its dosage target by Sunday.

This means that on average 4 per cent of all the eligible population are fully vaccinated in the state. However, there is a discrepancy between different health units and of the 45 health units in the state, 30 have less than 3 per cent of its population fully vaccinated.