He was speaking at an inspection of a government medical drug store held at Periyamedu on Thursday.

"Following the success of our first dry run, we will be conducting a dry run of the vaccination process in all the districts across Tamil Nadu on January 8. The government medical drug stores are going to be prepared on vaccine administration, room preparations, social distancing norms, and time between administrations, so that at least 100 people can be vaccinated at a time. Nearly 45 cold storage facilities have been prepared to store the vaccine, as well as the dry storage of about 33 lakh needles," he said.

Four locations have been primed for the storage of the vaccine, of which one is Chennai. Radhakrishnan stated that these preparations will help the state begin vaccine administration the day after the Centre distributes the vaccine.

"As per the plans, vaccines will be administered to healthcare workers first, following which frontline workers will receive the vaccines, after which the elderly will receive the vaccination. Healthcare workers amount to around 6 lakh people," he said. The Health Secretary also urged the public to continue using masks and follow social distancing even after getting vaccinated to ensure proper efficacy of the vaccine.