Chennai, Aug 17 (IANS): Even as Tamil Nadu has the capacity to vaccinate eight lakh people a day, the number of inoculations stand at 2.4 lakh a day. The shortage of vaccine, according to health officials, is the major reason for the less daily vaccinated count.

Health department officials said that the reduced count of inoculation is due to the shortage of vaccines in the state and that the department was trying to overcome this with a fresh quota of more doses of vaccines.

According to a document of the Union Health Ministry, as on August 2, the state stood at eighth position in the number of 45 plus category people having taken a single dose of vaccine. It is to be noted here that the first seven states in this list have administered the first dose of vaccine to more than 1 crore people.

The figures of the Union Health Ministry as of August 2 reveals that the state has administered a single dose of vaccine to 83,58,273 people which is much less when compared to other states who are leading in the list.

Tamil Nadu has gone three steps behind on the number of people who have been administered both the doses of the vaccine and stood at 11 in the overall ratings as far the document of the Union health ministry is concerned.

According to the data, the state has administered 97.91 lakh doses to people in the age group of 18-44 which is again the eighth position among the overall ratings.

The state Finance Minister P.T.R. Thiagarajan had in the Budget speech said that the state is vaccinating 2.4 lakh people a day while it has a capacity to vaccinate 8 lakh people a day. With the state allowing more areas to reopen, the vaccination has to be done on a priority basis to save the people from getting the disease.

The state, according to senior health officials, has trained manpower and administered vaccines to 69 lakh children in a one-week polio drive during the pandemic. A senior health official said, "We have to receive more vaccines and must make use of facilities and trained manpower to the maximum so that more people are given vaccines and this is the only way to overcome a third wave of the pandemic if it hits."

State Health Minister Ma Subramanian told IANS, "The government is constantly in touch with the Union health ministry and we will receive more allocations of the vaccine in a few day's time. The team is working around the clock and is closely monitoring the situation, we will overcome the vaccine shortage soon and increase the rate of inoculation in a few day's time."