‘We also hear cries’: SC asks govt to overhaul Covid plan
NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Friday asked the central government for a “substantial rethink of its policy decisions” on handling of the public heath emergency set off by the second Covid-19 wave, as it emphasised on the augmentation of medical oxygen, an overhaul of the vaccination programme to ensure equitable distribution, and deregulating exclusive intellectual property rights to boost the production of essential drugs.
Among the urgent suggestions the court made was that the Centre must consider increasing Delhi’s medical oxygen quota by 210 metric tonne (MT), raising it from the current 490MT, which has been a repeated demand of the Dehi government, and ensure that supply reaches the Capital.
“The intervention of the Supreme Court must make a difference in people’s lives. It must save some lives,” remarked the bench, headed by justice Dhananjaya Y Chandrachud, as it listed out the areas of concern where, it said, the government must “do some serious thinking on their policy decisions and revisit them”.
Reading out from a note prepared by him, justice Chandrachud highlighted that the focus areas of the court, in its first comprehensive intervention into the current Covid crisis, included the management and augmentation of medical oxygen with a real-time central dashboard for
demand and supply; a plan to make vaccines available to everyone in the country at the same price with an endeavour to make them free for the poor and the maginalised; compulsory licences to more manufacturing units after a temporary waiver of the patents in order to ramp up production of essential medicines such as remdesivir and favipiravir; and ensuring hospitalisation to all those who require urgent medical aid.
“We also hear people crying. People who have crossed our paths crying for a cylinder of oxygen. Today the ground situation
in the national capital is that there is no oxygen...or for that matter, in Gujarat or in other states. We can’t revive who have left us but we can certainly do something to save life of several others. We want you to tell us within a foreseeable future, what is going to be the difference? How will things change on the ground?” the bench, which included justices L Nageswara Rao and S Ravindra Bhat, asked solicitor general Tushar Mehta, who represented the Centre.
While fixing the next date of hearing as May 10 to enable the Centre to respond to the necessity
of modifying its policies, the bench said it will issue some interim directions to take care of the present situation, and the order will be uploaded on the Supreme Court website on Saturday morning.
One of the immediate directions, the court said, will be on ensuring that no patient is turned away by a Covid care facility in any state for want of a residential proof or any particular identity card.
The S-G responded that the Centre was talking to all states since it was aware that there
could be a second surge of infection which could be more serious than the first wave. He said that the Union government may issue directions for a uniform policy for admission of patients in the hospitals while other priorities such as augmentation of medical oxygen and ramping up of vaccine manufacturing were being looked into diligently. When Mehta said that the Delhi government has not been able to lift the allotted quantity of oxygen for want of tankers, the bench responded that the Centre had a “very valuable responsibility” where citizens of Delhi were concerned. “Delhi represents the nation and there is hardly any one ethnically Delhiite. Delhi represents people from all over the country. You have a special responsibility as the Centre,” it observed and added that the Centre must also help Delhi in arranging tankers for transportation of oxygen. In the suo motu (on its own) proceedings of the top court, Mehta was assisted by Sumita Dawra, an additional secretary in the ministry of commerce and industry, who heads the oxygen procurement and supply coordination team at the Centre. Dawra contended through a presentation that there was enough quantity of medical oxygen available in the country, and the issues relating to tankers and transportation were being ironed out.