INDIA
The vaccination process in Madurai district has been very slow with only 71% of people getting the first dose and 32% getting the second dose.
In a move to stop the spread of the Omicron variant of COVID-19, Tamil Nadu's Madurai district administration has barred unvaccinated residents from entering 18 public places from December 12. The restriction includes entry to malls, shopping complexes and other public places from next week.
District Collector Dr S Aneesh Sekhar said on Friday that residents are being given one week's time to at least get the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. The decision comes at a time when two Omicron cases have been identified in Karnataka and two samples from Tamil Nadu have been sent for genome testing.
Earlier, on November 18 the Directorate of Public Health and Preventive Medicine under the Tamil Nadu Public Health Act, 1939, had issued a circular making COVID-19 vaccination mandatory to enter public places. Now people of the district are being given a buffer time of one week to get at least one dose of the vaccine.
District Collector revealed that the vaccination process in the district has been very slow with only 71% of people getting the first dose and 32% getting the second dose in the district. Nearly three lakh people in the district are yet to get even one dose of the vaccine, he said.
In the last 24 hours, 711 people have tested positive for the COVID-19 virus in Tamil Nadu. Chennai and Coimbatore accounted for the majority of new infections with 128 and 127 cases respectively, while the remaining are from across other parts of the state. Till date, Tamil Nadu has recorded 27,29,061 cases of COVID-19 with 36,513 mortalities.