Chennai, June 30(BPNS)

As the state had only 50,000 vaccine doses left on Wednesday, the drive was slowed down and several vaccination centres shut down. The state has vaccinated frontline workers and those who are on the priority list with the 50,000 doses that it had on Wednesday morning. The stock is now exhausted and the drive will commence from Thursday after fresh stocks arrive.

The state is expecting a replenishment of vaccine doses by Wednesday evening or latest by Thursday morning.

The state immunization wing has already communicated to the Union government on Tuesday evening to dispatch the next batch of vaccines ahead of schedule.  Officials told BPNS that the next batch of 72 lakh doses of vaccine which were scheduled to reach the state on July 6 will arrive on July 2. However, officials are expecting vaccines by Wednesday evening itself and it would take a day to deliver these vaccines across all the districts of the state. A senior officer with the Tamil Nadu state immunization department told IANS  that even delivery of vaccines by air to various districts is under consideration.

The state immunization officer of Tamil Nadu, Dr. K. Vinayakumar while speaking to BPNS said, “ The state received 48 lakh doses and we were able to vaccinate 57.17 lakh people from this as in many districts nurses are able to deliver 12 doses from a vial as the vaccine companies usually fill 1 ml extra in each vial or two extra doses which the nurses have been able to extract and inject people.”

It may be noted that the average vaccinations per day have increased from 90,000 in May to 1.9 lakh people in June.