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Can't cast doubt on Vaccination drive: Supreme Court
Supreme Court
The Supreme Court on Friday said it cannot just cast doubt on the Covid-19 vaccination programme in the country at this crucial stage and cannot afford the price of laxity of not vaccinating people.
New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Friday said it cannot just cast doubt on the Covid-19 vaccination programme in the country at this crucial stage and cannot afford the price of laxity of not vaccinating people. The top court said lakhs and crores of people have taken their vaccines and even the World Health Organization (WHO) has approved it and the whole world is getting vaccinated.
A bench of Justices DY Chandrachud and AS Bopanna asked the petitioners Ajay Kumar Gupta and others to serve the copy of the petition to the solicitor general and sought his response. During the hearing, the bench said, "We do have a system, guidelines in place for monitoring any adverse event following immunization. There will always be dissenters, but policy cannot be fashioned as per them."
"We have to see the good of the nation as a whole. The world has witnessed an unprecedented pandemic, like of which we have not seen in our lifetime. We cannot just cast doubt on the vaccination programme at this crucial stage. It is of the highest national importance that people get vaccinated. We cannot afford the price of laxity of not vaccinating the people," the bench said. The plea filed by Gupta and others alleged that thousands of deaths have taken place due to Adverse Events Following Immunization (AEFI) and sought direction to Centre to make administration of vaccine purely voluntary, prior informed consent of person going for immunization and direction to Centre for seeking a report from European countries where Covishield was discontinued or use restricted.
The bench said that there will always be studies 5-10 years down the line about the vaccination programme but all that it wants is that people remain safe and fatalities are reduced. Senior advocate Colin Gonsalves, appearing for petitioners, said that there have been thousands of cases of deaths and serious adverse events following vaccination which have been reported in various newspapers of the country.
The bench said, "Deaths cannot be attributed to vaccination alone, there may be other reasons".
Gonsalves said it is possible that vaccination may not have been the cause but these deaths need to be investigated as to whether there was a clot in the brain or the heart due to the vaccination, which led to a heart attack or brain stroke.
