Chennai

The vaccine for Encephalitis in children below five years of age was also launched. As many as 9.23 lakh children will benefit from this in the State yearly. The State health department is spending about Rs 12,000 per child to vaccinate them with pneumococcal and encephalitis vaccines.

The doses will be given to children on the 6th week, 14th week and 9th month as pneumonia is one of the causes of child mortality. The Minister said, despite our requests for more COVID vaccines, the supply is short.

“After Health Secretary J Radhakrishnan met Union Health Ministry officials, we received more than 5 lakh vaccines from the Centre. A total of 1,67,88,960 vaccines have been received and 1,67,41,662 people have been vaccinated. There are about 3.97 lakh doses of vaccines available in the State. As people wait for the second dose of Covaxin, it will be prioritised as about one lakh doses are expected,’ said the Minister.

Subramanian and Radhakrishnan will meet Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya in Delhi on Thursday. They will request additional vaccine allocation to Tamil Nadu. He added that 0.5 ml from each vial is being administered per person and excess amount due to overfilling is also being utilised.

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