CHENNAI: Leader of the Opposition in the Tamil Nadu Assembly Edappadi K Palaniswami on Saturday demanded a white paper on vaccine supply from the central government, its availability in the state, distribution to districts, how many people in Tamil Nadu have been vaccinated so far etc. Quickly responding to the demand, Health Minister Ma Subramaniam said he would be giving the details to the public on Saturday evening.
Palaniswami, in a statement here, said the previous AIADMK government was transparent on COVID-related activities including vaccination and informing the public about deaths due to the virus.
"Just after the DMK government assumed office, it promised to float global tenders for importing vaccines and also said that the state government was ready to take over the integrated vaccine production complex at Chengalpattu to commence vaccine production expeditiously. When these efforts did not take off, the DMK government rolled out another promise that it would procure vaccines from the open market and provide it to the people," Palaniswami said.
The AIADMK leader charged that the DMK government has no plan for proper vaccination of the people with details such as how many would need vaccination in each district, how many had co-morbidities and how many persons should be given priority in administering the vaccine.
"As such, people throng vaccination centres in large numbers and this leads to the further spread of the infection. Instead of conveying the real situation to the people, the DMK government has been passing the blame on the central government. Further, there are reports that during the past couple of weeks, the state government has been providing incorrect figures to prove that the infection is coming down," Palaniswami added.
Though there were reports that the central government had dispatched 30 lakh doses of COVID vaccine to Tamil Nadu two days ago, there was no information on whether these doses were administered to the people properly.
Palaniswami further said Chief Minister MK Stalin should exert pressure on Prime Minister Narendra Modi to get the required quantity of vaccine doses to Tamil Nadu instead of merely writing to the Prime Minister on this issue.
"Many of those people who took the first dose of vaccine two months ago are eagerly awaiting the second dose. Further, people are made to run from pillar to post to get Covaxin and Covishield vaccines since they were asked to administer the same brand of vaccine for both doses,” Palaniswami alleged.