Chennai, Aug 4 (IANS): Tamil Nadu health minister, Ma Subramanian has said that the state has received 79 lakh doses of Covid 19 vaccines for the month of August. He said that of these, 17 lakh doses would go to the private sector and the balance would be used by the state government.

In a statement on Tuesday, the minister said that the state has to date received 2,25,33,760 doses of vaccine and 2,18,31,183 doses have been administered.

The state health minister said that there was no scarcity of vaccines and added that the government is prioritizing the beneficiaries and will be administering the second dose of vaccines to those who have taken the first dose.

He also said that the state health department would be sending more vaccines to the districts which have less seroprevalence. The minister said that the sero positivity was 37 per cent in Erode, 43 per centin Coimbatore, and 46 per cent in Tiruppur.

Ma Subramanian said that the advice of scientists and doctors from premium institutes of the country like All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras, and other medical institutions were taken into consideration on the possibility of a third Covid-19 wave.

The minister said that the state health department has set up pediatric Covid-19 wards for an anticipated third wave even though the doctors at AIIMS have said that predicting children getting infected in a third wave is a guess.

Subramanian also said that the state was regularly sending the samples for genome sequencing to InStem Bangeluru for whole genome sequencing and added that an existing laboratory at the Tamil Nadu Dr M.G.R. Medical University was being upgraded for starting genome sequencing to identify variants.