Over 7.38 lakh people vaccinated during 32nd mega vax drive so far

CHENNAI: The 32nd mega vaccination drive was organised in the State on Sunday, with more than 7.38 lakh people being vaccinated with COVID-19 vaccines until 1.15 pm. As many as 44,697 first doses of vaccines, 2,43,436 second dose and 4,50,797 precautionary booster doses were administered.

Health Minister Ma Subramanian inspected the mega vaccination drive at the urban primary health centre in Teynampet. He said that people are hesitant to get vaccinated and even BA.4 and BA.5 can cause death in unvaccinated people. He said that the free precautionary booster dose has helped in increasing the number of beneficiaries for the booster dose. He also urged more people to make use of the 75 days free booster dose vaccination.

The mega vaccination camps are being organised at 50,000 locations and will be observed every alternative week in the State, the health minister had earlier announced. As many as 4.61 crore beneficiaries have benefitted from 31 mega COVID-19 vaccination camps held so far. At least 95.37 percent of people aged above 18 years have been vaccinated with the first dose and 87.63 percent of people have been administered with the second dose across Tamil Nadu.

Talking about the cases of Monkeypox in Kerala, Telangana and Delhi and the infection being declared an emergency by WHO, the health minister said that we have separate wards ready for treatment of these cases in the State.

"The screening of international passengers is being done and state health department officials also inspected the screening procedures at all the airports. All the 13 bordering areas of Tamil Nadu with Kerala are being monitored and the monitoring of children especially by fever screening, saturation test, checking for any skin problems and RT-PCR is being done," the health minister said