Tamil Nadu: Frontline staff hesitant too, says vaccine drive chief

CHENNAI: Tamil Nadu vaccinated 11,396 people – 8,894

healthcare providers

and 2,502

frontline workers

– on Friday. This takes the recipient tally in the state to 1,57,046 after nearly 20 days of

vaccination

.

The state, which aggressively pushed the

Covid-19

curve, is struggling with the plateauing vaccination graph. Three days ago, when the state started vaccinating frontline workers from the revenue, home and local administration departments along with the health department, it added more

vaccine

centres and opened more sessions expecting a jump in recipients.

The state had the capacity to vaccinate 70,986 frontline workers but has vaccinated 6,818, an average of 2,200 people a day for the past three days. In the past 20 days, the state has vaccinated 1.5 lakh healthcare providers against its capacity to inoculate 5.13 lakh. “We see vaccine hesitancy among frontline workers too,” said joint director immunisation Dr K Vinay Kumar.

On Wednesday, health officials met senior

police

officials and urged them to explain and encourage more police personnel to come forward to take the vaccine, while the health secretary visited Government Stanley Medical College and Hospital to talk to doctors, nurses, paramedical and other staff. “We are seeing some improvement in vaccine acceptance even as elders and those with co-morbidities are awaiting their turn,” said health secretary J Radhakrishnan. “We will offer the vaccine to the elderly and people with co-morbidities as soon as we get the nod from the Centre,” he said. The state had enlisted 5.62 lakh healthcare providers and more than four lakh frontline workers.

The public health department added seven more vaccination centres on Friday, taking the total number of centres in the state to 571 and has opened 565 sessions. With this, the state could have vaccinated 69,650 people but only 11,396 took the vaccine. Meanwhile, Puducherry has vaccinated 3,168 people in the past 11 days and phase-2 began on Friday.