Chennai, Sep 13 (IANS): Nilgiris has become the first district in Tamil Nadu to have administered at least one dose of vaccine to all its population. This was announced by the state health department after the mega vaccination drive.
The drive was conducted on Sunday. State health minister Ma Subramanian told IANS, "After the mega vaccination drive on Sunday, we have inoculated with the first dose of vaccine the entire eligible population of Nilgiris district. The district has 5.14 lakh population and all those above 18 have received their first dose of vaccination."
According to information available from the district health officials, 29,760 doses of vaccine were administered in the district on Sunday.
The state during its mega vaccination drive administered 28,91,021 doses of vaccine on Sunday leading to the total number of vaccines administered in the state to four crore.
Ma Subramanian further told IANS, "Tamil Nadu is perhaps the only state to administer such a large number of vaccines on a single day. Of course Uttar Pradesh has administered 20 lakh vaccines on a single day once but the population of that state is three times that of Tamil Nadu."
He said that the state's health department has proved that it has the ability to administer such a high dose of vaccine and said that the people of the state have become highly aware of the importance of vaccination.
The minister also said that there was a shortage in certain vaccination centres due to the heavy influx of people. He said that the health department officials have noted down the telephone and contact details of those people who could not be vaccinated even after reaching the camps and that they would be notified at the near future on the date of their inoculation.
Tamil Nadu had announced to administer vaccines to 20 lakh of its eligible population in a mega vaccination drive on Sunday. The state had set up 40,000 vaccine centres and supplied 29 lakh doses of vaccines across the state.
Health department officials told IANS that special care was taken in vaccinating people of the nine districts of Tamil Nadu that share borders with Kerala. It may be noted that Kerala has a high number of Covid-19 cases with a high Test Positivity Rate for the past several weeks.
Chennai with 1.88 lakh doses of vaccine administered to the people topped the list of districts that had inoculated the maximum number of people. Coimbatore with 1.52 lakh doses followed the state capital. Tiruppur with 1.2 lakh, Tiruchi (1.1 lakh), Thanjavur (1.2 lakh), Madurai (1.2 lakh) and Tiruvallur with 1.01 lakh administered more than 1 lakh vaccines on Sunday. State health department officials said that other than these districts, 17 districts administered more than 50,000 vaccines each on Sunday.