12 government hospitals to receive breast milk banks this year

"As many as seven government medical college hospitals and five government hospitals will also be provided with breast milk banks this year. The funds by Union Health Ministry will be used for setting up the breast milk banks, using Rs. 12 lakhs for each breast milk bank in the hospitals," said Ma Subramanian.

He inaugurated the breastfeeding room for lactating mothers at Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital, on account of World Breastfeeding Week on Tuesday.

Talking about the survey by IIT-Madras that predicted the peak of COVID-19 cases during third wave in September, health minister said that the surveys and reports by medical institutions and research authorities are being considered to prepare against third wave of COVID-19 and all the measures are being taken to ensure adequate availability of beds for children especially and efforts are also being taken to prevent a surge in the cases.

He said that samples from clusters of COVID-19 cases among children in Kancheepuram have been sent for genome sequencing and out of 40 samples, 32 of them were affected from the delta variant of SARS Cov-2.

"We are keeping a check on all the imported cases also and individuals travelling from Kerala are supposed to mandatorily test using RT-PCR from August 5. Passengers are also being screened at the airports and testing methods are being used to give results within 13 minutes using a new technology to speed up the process," he said.

Health Minister announced that districts including Coimbatore, Erode, Thirupathur and others that reported low seropositivity as per the phase -III sero-survey in the State, will be given additional allocation of vaccines to prevent a spike in these districts during the third wave.

Tamil Nadu is expected to receive 79 lakh doses of vaccines in the month of August, including 17 lakh doses for the private sector hospitals. So far, about three lakh doses of Covaxin have been received in the State on Monday, from this month's allocation.

The programme for the screening of non-communicable diseases and providing door-to-door medicines and treatment for the same under 'Medicines in search of People' scheme will be launched by Chief Minister M K Stalin in Krishnagiri on Thursday, he added.