Centre not utilising vaccine doses adequately: Delhi HC
NEW DELHI: The Delhi high court on Thursday questioned the Centre over the rationale behind restricting Covid-19 vaccines only to people above 60 years of age or above 45 with serious co-morbidities, and observed that the government wasn’t adequately utilising doses made available by manufactures.
It also asked the Centre why it was donating or selling Covid-19 vaccines to foreign countries at a time when the drive to inoculate Indian citizens was not optimised.
“We are not utilising Covid-19 vaccines fully. We are either donating it to foreign countries or selling it to them, and are not vaccinating our own people. There has to be that sense of responsibility and urgency,” the bench of justice Vipin Sanghi and Rekha Palli told additional solicitor general Chetan Sharma, who was representing Centre.
The court also directed the Centre to file an affidavit giving the rationale behind restricting people by creating age categories for who can be vaccinated, and the rationale behind defining co-morbidites that make people above 45 eligible.
At the same time, the bench asked the two firms that make the vaccines administered in India — Serum Institute of India, which makes Covishield, and Bharat Biotech, which makes Covaxin — to put on record their maximum capacities.
The two companies, represented by their counsel, told the court that they had excess vaccines available for supply, but could only make them available based on permissions by the Union government.
The bench then told the firms to furnish details such as their daily, weekly and monthly manufacturing capacity; how much of the current capacity was going unutilized; and if the capacity could be scaled up further.
The bench was hearing a suo motu (on its own) case on the premise that judges, court staff and lawyers should be considered as frontline workers, and hence, should be vaccinated on
manufacturing priority. The hearing comes at a time when experts have been calling for teachers to also be included as frontline workers irrespective of their age since schools have reopened in several states, and are on the verge of reopening for all classes in several others. So far, India has provided over 46.1 million vaccine doses to several countries around the world.
“There is no shortage of Covid-19 vaccines in the country; in fact, the supply chain is phenomenal. What the focus will be on is optimum utilisation of the current vaccination capacity, and gradually scaling up to vaccinate the target population,” siad Dr NK Arora, member, National Task Force on Covid.