The Centre on Tuesday told the Supreme Court that the gradual lowering of the age group of people eligible for COVID–19 shots to now children between 12 and 14 years is part of its vaccination policy of “limited risk”.
The government said the question of whether or not to administer paediatric vaccination is entirely the decision of the Executive and there is hardly room for judicial review.
The decision to bring down the target population for paediatric vaccination from 15–17–year–old adolescents to children between 12–14 years was made after extensive deliberations with experts.
The Centre was responding to a petition filed by Dr. Jacob Puliyel, a former member of National Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation represented by advocate Prashant Bhushan, who argued that the government had neglected to get an informed consent from people about vaccination by being opaque about vaccine trials and by not putting the entire data and inconsistencies up for public and independent scientific scrutiny. Mr. Bhushan said several States had even denied basic rights to citizens who were not vaccinated.
Mr. Mehta countered that the government, through its vaccination programme, was merely safeguarding the rights of crores of people from getting infected with the virus. Any intervention by the court on the basis of unfounded apprehensions of one person would promote vaccine hesitancy and harm public interest.
“Imagine, it would have been a nightmare if our health workers were working unprotected. Their service was salutary,” the top law officer said.
He said there is enough data in the public domain to show the vaccines are safe and immunogenic.
As of March 13, over 180 crore doses have been administered. Adverse impact of the vaccine has been seen in only 0.004% of the population and in many the effects were minor, Mr. Mehta submitted.
He said accelerated approvals for vaccines were sought and given because the circumstances were “extreme and extraordinary” globally. The law allows accelerated approval of therapeutic drugs if the situation is severe, rare and when there is a lack of alternative treatment.
“It was something that happens once in a 100 years. This was a rarest of rare case. India had lost five lakh lives... However, both Covishield and Covaxin had got WHO approvals,” Mr. Mehta submitted.
