Hours after the Tamil Nadu government has suspended its vaccination drive owing to the dearth of vaccines in the state, Tamil Nadu has in the evening hours of Tuesday received 4.20 lakh COVID-19 vaccine doses to address the shortages as the consignment has come to meet the state's vaccine requirement for the next four days. 

The state government has suspended the vaccination drive from June 2 to June 5 as the stock of vaccines in the state has run out. As the government is expecting the large-scale vaccine consignment on June 6, the arrival of 4.20 lakh vaccines on Tuesday would keep the state's vaccination drive going without any major hassles. The arrived vaccines will be rapidly distributed to the districts to continue vaccinating the people. 

According to reports, 4.20 lakh Covishield vaccines, developed by Serum Institute of India, has arrived in Chennai from Pune on Tuesday evening. The state health authorities had received the vaccines from the Chennai airport and the vaccines were taken to the complex of the Directorate of Medical and Rural Health Services (DMS) in Chennai. The reports say that the arrived vaccines will be allocated based on the requirements in the districts before transporting them to the districts. 

The health department officials said that of these 4.20 lakh vaccines, 2.10 vaccines will be reserved for the people who are above the age of 45 while the rest 2.10 vaccines will be reserved for the people who are between the age of 18 to 44, in a bid to balance and concentrate on the age categories that are currently receiving the vaccine. The reports say that the arrived vaccines will be managed for the next four days. 

Earlier on Tuesday, the state government has suspended the vaccination drive from June 2 to June 5 and is expected to resume on June 6 after the state receives the next round of consignment from the vaccine producers. Speaking to the reporters on Tuesday, Tamil Nadu Health Minister M Subramanian said, "The remaining vaccines will get over by Tuesday evening. Till now, Tamil Nadu has received a consignment of 96.18 lakh vaccine doses and of these, 89 lakh doses have already been administered. The remaining vaccine doses will be over by today. So, we cannot administer the vaccine doses for the next four days (from June 2 to June 5)." 

The next consignment is scheduled to arrive from Bharat Biotech, the producers of Covaxin, by June 6 and from the Serum Institute of India, the producers of Covishield, by June 9. The dearth and suspension of vaccines in the state have come days after the government had launched the vaccination drive to inoculate the doses for the people in the age category of 18 to 44 years, the major populace of the state. 

The health minister has further said, "The Union government was supposed to provide over 1.75 lakh vaccines but they have not given us yet. They have said that they will give vaccines for the sum we have already paid along with the consignment they were supposed to deliver for this month. So, from June 6, possibly we will start distributing 42 lakh doses to the districts and restart the vaccination." 

It must be noted that Tamil Nadu is vaccinating around 1.50 lakh people per day on average. On Monday, Subramanian said that Tamil Nadu was expected to receive 25 lakh vaccines from the Union government for vaccinating the 18-plus age group but received only 13 lakh cases. Districts like Thanjavur and Tiruvarur had run out of vaccines. He stated that in addition to 13 lakh doses, the state had earlier obtained 83 lakh doses from the Center, and about 87 lakh people have been vaccinated till Sunday.