With the view of ensuring that people living in the state get settled up for a new normal of wearing masks to subdue the rapid spread of COVID-19, the Tamil Nadu state government has announced that it would be distributing cloth masks for all the ration cardholders in the state for a free-of-cost.

The move has come amid peaking Coronavirus cases in the state and to make a bulk procurement of cloth masks, the government has installed a seven-member committee headed by Revenue Commissioner J Radhakrishnan IAS and this committee will analyze the specifications of the masks and would fix a price of the procurement. The government would be providing two reusable cloth masks per person. 

According to the database of the civil supplies and consumer protection department, the state has 2.08 crore ration cardholders with 6.74 crore family members and the government would be procuring about 13.48 crore cloth masks so that it can provide two masks per person at free-of-cost as wearing masks have been one of the top players on the fray of containment measures to curb the spread.

In the order, the Chief Secretary of the government has said that the seven-member committee would be finalizing the contract and it should satisfy the government that the procurement price of masks is reasonable and with speculations following which the government would consent to the contract. 

According to the reports, the committee would be comprised of the director of public health and preventive medicine, the director of disaster management, deputy secretary (CM Relief Fund), deputy secretary (budget) of the finance department, chief accounts officer of commissionerate of revenue administration and disaster management, and managing director or joint director in Tamil Nadu Medical services corporation.

The order of distribution of masks has come as a sequel of the guidelines of the Union Home Ministry in which it has mandated the people to wear masks in public places to curb the spread of the pandemic. Tamil Nadu is the second Indian state with the most number of COVID-19 cases, after Maharashtra, by reporting 36,841 total cases so far as of Wednesday, according to the Union Health Ministry.