The Tamil Nadu government’s Covid vaccination drive is proceeding in fits and starts as frequent supply shortages threaten to set back efforts to inoculate legions of vulnerable communities amid the threat of another wave of the pandemic.
Chennai had seen a critical shortage of beds, in the second wave: Covid patients waited in ambulances that had queued up at government hospitals, looking for their turn to be admitted. Emerging from the second wave, the state had seen a strong push for vaccination, with a lot more awareness among the public about the benefit of getting the jab, a total turnaround from the pre-second wave days when hesitancy was a key challenge for health officials.
The city’s vaccination drive has been consistent with attempting to take the doses across working classes but it had displayed clear inadequacies in supply often. Recently, there was little vaccination at the government health centres due to the drying up of supplies.
“Our vaccination drive is going 24/7, subject to availability,” said Gagandeep Singh Bedi, Chennai Corporation commissioner, summing up the intent of the drive and what’s been holding it back. “As far as the Chennai Corporation is concerned, we’ve touched a high of over 35,000 doses in a single day; the Tamil Nadu government has been quite liberal when it comes to Chennai because it’s a large metropolis. But still, shortages persist.”
As of Wednesday, Chennai had vaccinated 12% of its eligible population (people above 18 years of age), “which is one of the highest among large metropolises,” said the official.
According to the CoWIN website run by the government, Tamil Nadu, at 1.56 crore doses as of Thursday morning, lags behind other large states such as Gujarat, Karnataka, Maharashtra, and Andhra Pradesh (only by a much smaller margin). Bihar, which conducts vaccination drives at over 1,390 government-controlled centres, has administered 1.58 crore doses.
According to the website, comparing states on percentage of vaccination (both doses), Tamil Nadu at 4.4% lags behind Karnataka, Maharashtra, Odisha, West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, J&K, Kerala and Delhi.
Tamil Nadu does have a long way to go but the situation on the ground has been quite the opposite. Signs of patience running out among the public have been shown, clearly. In Madurai on Wednesday, people indulged in demonstrations outside a government hospital after “no vaccine” notices were put up on the walls. The state health minister, Ma. Subramanian, insists that the Centre needs to do a lot more to meet the demand for vaccines. “The Hon’ble Prime Minister has been urging everyone to take the vaccines in his Mann ki Baat talks. Even if the Centre sends 2 crore vaccines in a month, the state has the administrative ability to store and carry out the vaccination,” he said.
According to the minister, over 50 lakh doses have been administered in Tamil Nadu in June, and the number is expected to ramp up to 71 lakh in July.
The new government under MK Stalin had pursued a twin strategy of aggressively pushing for vaccine allotments from the Centre while trying to put in place local manufacture: an HLL Biotech factory off Chennai is being looked at as a possible destination but there is little headway as of now in realising its potential.
Virologists say the damage of the third wave depends clearly on how deeply the vaccination drives of states go into their own populations. Public health physician Jacob John, speaking to CNN-News18, said he believes it is a remote possibility to expect a state to kick-start local manufacturing in such adverse conditions. “Currently, the state government is trying to activate it as a state initiative, but in India every bureaucratic decision takes ages,” he said.
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