Chennai, June 30(BPNS)

With the state having only 50,000 doses of vaccine left for Wednesday, most of the vaccination centres in the state are likely to shut down and vaccination being restricted only to a select few across Tamil Nadu.

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 IANS 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 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.