Chennai, July 2(BPNS)

Tamil Nadu state Public health department has planned a massive outreach programme involving volunteers, NGO’s and other social organisations to conduct a massive door to door campaign over Covid awareness and the necessity to wear masks, safe distancing, use of sanitisers, and vaccination.

The  department has formulated the new plan following reports of  slight increase in the number of active cases in 15 districts of the state on Thursday. The state public health department, according to highly placed sources have already approached NGS’s and other social organisations including doctors bodies to help the department in the outreach programme.

According to a pilot study report of the department, around 36000 volunteers would be required for a door to door campaign and missives have already been sent to corporates and other companies to support the initiative through their CSR initiatives.

The Greater Chennai Corporation had in the early days of the second wave of the pandemic roped in several Tamil movie and television actors to create awareness videos and according to senior officials, it was a big hit with people sharing the awareness videos in large numbers. Tamil Nadu state public health department is planning such an initiative also roping in stars to create awareness on basic matters like wearing of masks, safe distancing, sanitizing, and vaccination through these short videos.

Several Tamil film stars have already uploaded their videos calling upon the public to  stay safe and not to venture out unless necessary as also time tested campaigns like “Stay home, stay safe”.

Secretary of Tamil Nadu association of small and medium industries, U Mathivannan while speaking to BPNS said, “Government and health department must immediately step up the campaign as in villages and in small towns, people are not caring much and after the first dose of vaccination, the level of confidence has increased. This will lead to disaster and unless government is strict on its controlling measures, we may not find the graph coming down. For the industry to pick up, the disease must be banished from the and country.”

The Tamil Nadu state health secretary, J Radhakrishnan while speaking to BPNS said, “We are taking certain measures so that there is no rise in Covid positive cases and we hope to contain this pandemi