TN Finance Minister calls for federal approach to deal with Covid-like situation

Thiagarajan was interacting with the media after inspecting vaccination camps at Madurai along with Commerce Minister P. Murthy.

The Finance Minister said that the CoWIN portal, where the details of the vaccinated people are available, is a classic example of why the country needs a federal approach to pandemic-like situations.

He said, "The details of the vaccinated populace is available only with the Centre and not with the states as it should have been."

Thiagarajan said that the Madurai corporation has successfully brought the second Covid wave under control and added that the district was well prepared as far as the health infrastructure is concerned.

The Minister said that there were sufficient beds, oxygen concentrators, oxygen generators and Covid care centres in Madurai.

Thiagarajan said that as many as five lakh people have been inoculated in Madurai and of this 4.71 lakh have received their first dose while 90,000 have received both the vaccine shots.

However, the Minister said that as the government and the administration was preparing to counter a possible third Covid wave, the non-availability of the vaccination details was posing a problem.

He said, "As the CoWIN portal is a centralized system, the details of vaccinated people are available only with the Centre and this is creating a hurdle to implement a pilot project to identify the vulnerable people and monitor them continuously."

Thiagarajan said that the state government will be writing to the central government seeking details of the vaccinated population in the state and said that the Madurai district administration has 70 per cent of the details of the vaccinated people in the district through the vaccination camps. However the full details are with the central government.

The Minister said, "We need to analyse the full details of the vaccinated population to understand as to which part of the city has a larger number of immunised people and where there is a lesser number."

He added that this information was important to tackle the third wave of the pandemic and added that the state was expecting the centre to share the details within the next few days.