Tamil Nadu incentivises COVID workers & PG students; ₹25L for deceased doctors' families

Tamil Nadu CM MK Stalin announced financial incentives for COVID frontline warriors, including nurses, doctors, healthcare workers and support staff as the state battles the second wave of the pandemic. Making the announcement on Tuesday, the new Tamil Nadu CM said that the government will provide Rs 30,000 each to doctors treating COVID patients, Rs 20,000 each to nurses and Rs 15,000 each to other workers in COVID-19 wards in addition to providing Rs 20,000 as incentives to PG students (house surgeons) and trainee doctors in order to encourage them. He also announced ex-gratia of Rs 25 lakh each for families of 43 doctors who had lost their lives in the line of duty in the battle against COVID. 

Tamil Nadu CM announces incentives, compensation for frontline workers

(43 doctors have sacrificed their lives for the cause - Rs 25 lakh compensation will be given to their families. Incentives are provided to all government hospital staff, including physicians. The government will stand with you and stand with the people!)

Stalin's move to incentivise doctors-under-training to join the serving force and battle COVID comes just a few weeks after the Centre had postponed the NEET-PG exam for the current session till further notice in a bid to integrate the batch of trained aspirants to join the COVID warriors.

Earlier on Tuesday, MK Stalin appealed to the people of the state to donate funds to the state government in order to fight the raging COVID-19 health crisis. CM Stalin assured transparency in the utilisation of public funds while promising that the expenses incurred from the funds will be made public. In a statement, he assured the funds received would be used only for stepping up medical infrastructure like ramping up production of medical oxygen and storage facilities, set up oxygen beds, and purchasing vaccines, RT-PCR kits, life-saving devices among others. The funds received would be 100 per cent tax exempted

Tamil Nadu's COVID situation

Tamil Nadu on Tuesday recorded 29,272 fresh COVID-19 cases in the single biggest day spike so far, pushing the caseload to 14,38,509 while 298 deaths in the last 24 hours taking the toll to 16,178. According to a medical bulletin, 19,182 people were discharged today, taking the tally to 12,60,150, leaving 1,62,181 active infections. With an increase in new infections, Chief Minister M K Stalin appealed to the general public and industries to donate to the Chief Minister's Public Relief Fund to fight against the raging pandemic.

The state capital accounted for 7,466 new infections, totalling 4,04,733 to date. The metropolis also leads in the number of fatalities with 5,368 deaths. The number of samples tested in the last 24 hours was at 1,56,111, pushing the cumulative number of specimens examined so far to 2,43,10,931. Besides Chennai, Chengalpet added 2,419 cases, Coimbatore 2,650, Thiruvallur 1,204 and Madurai 1,024, while the remaining 31 districts clocked new infections in triple digits.