Chennai, Jul 23 (IANS): Tamil Nadu Health Minister Ma Subramanian has said that two crore people have been administered vaccines against Covid-19 in his state as of Thursday.

"We have administered 2 crore doses of vaccine to the eligible population comprising of pregnant women, lactating mothers and differently-abled. We think that we have achieved a milestone but there is an acute shortage of vaccines and people are approaching vaccine centres earmarked for the second dose for the first dose and this is also creating problems," the Minister told IANS.

The shortage of Covaxin is another major hindrance being faced by the health department. 69,970 doses of Covaxin were sent to all districts to administer second doses.

"The Covaxin doses are earmarked for second doses for those who have taken the first jab. The Covaxin has to be administered within six weeks of the first dose and we want to ensure that no beneficiary suffers due to shortage," T.S. Selvavinayagam, Director of Public Health Services in Government of Tamil Nadu told IANS.

The health department in a statement said that on Thursday 3,17,168 people were vaccinated taking the tally to the highest numbers of vaccines administered in a day after July 13.

However, shortage of vaccines has led to corporations like Trichy and Coimbatore conducting exclusive camps for vaccination of second doses. There were exclusive second doses of Covaxin and Covishield vaccines in these camps. Doctors and those in charge of these camps are facing difficulties to execute the plan of the second dose exclusively for those having taken the first jab as people are barging into these centres seeking first doses.

Mahalingam, an epidemiologist told IANS: "It is unfortunate that people are lacking patience. After the concerted efforts on conducting awareness programmes, people have come out in large numbers, to take the jabs but they are restless and want their first doses of vaccines at any cost. They are shoving into vaccine camps exclusively earmarked for the second round of vaccines and this is turning into a law and order problem."

In Trichy, according to the state health department, 12 vaccination camps were held on Thursday of which 4 camps were exclusively meant for the second dose of the vaccine.

Coimbatore also had similar camps but in some places, people created problems as there were complaints of political leaders taking up the initiative to distribute tokens.