Tamil Nadu :Tamil Nadu government is planning to utilise the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) funds of various companies in the state to provide free Covid-19 vaccines to people at private hospitals, reported Tamil newspaper Dina Thanthi on Saturday. The state's health minister Ma Subramanian, after presiding over the coordination meeting on vaccination, told media persons that Tamil Nadu has been allotted 72 lakh vaccine doses for the month of July. The state government is planning to provide free vaccination in private hospitals too. To enable such an initiative, the vaccination at the private hospitals will be brought under CSR funding. The vaccines allotted to the private hospitals will be administered free to the people and the CSR funding will be used to bear the cost of the vaccines, the minister said.

The private hospitals in Tamil Nadu have received 18,70,520 vaccine doses so far. Out of this, the private hospitals administered 13,31,613 vaccine doses and 5,38,907 doses are still in stock at the hospitals. The state government will publish the CSR funding details of the vaccines online, Subramanian mentioned.

Elaborating further on the vaccination in the state, Subramanian said that they are now planning to vaccinate all the tribal communities in Dharmapuri and Krishnagiri districts like the state government vaccinated the tribal people in the Nilgiris district earlier. All the hill villages of Tamil Nadu will be covered under the free vaccination. The government never forces anyone on compulsory vaccination but the people are sensitized on the importance of vaccination to fight Covid-19, he said.

Subramanian also ruled out any deaths in the state due to oxygen shortage after the DMK government took charge. During the AIADMK rule, the state witnessed 13 people dying in the Chengalpattu district due to oxygen shortage, and the chief Minister then communicated the same to the Prime Minister. The four deaths in Vellore hospital and two deaths at Rajiv Gandhi Government Hospital at Chennai were due to technical snags in oxygen supply and not due to oxygen shortage, he added.