New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Tuesday reserved its orders on a plea seeking disclosure of Covid 19 vaccine trial data and plea raising concern on COVID vaccine being made mandatory by some states. The writ petition filed by Dr Jacob Puliyel, a former member of the National Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation, sought data of clinical trial, adverse effects of COVID vaccines while challenging the vaccine mandate imposed by some states. A bench comprising Justices L Nageswara Rao and BR Gavai was hearing the petition.
In the last hearing, the government had made its submissions. It was pointed out by the petitioner that Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu have issued certain notifications barring the entry of people in public places who are unvaccinated. And though the Union of India claims that it is not made mandatory as of now, the states have tried to compel people indirectly.
Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh justified the government orders mandating COVID vaccine to avail public utilities and access public places in the plea in Supreme Court. Appearing for Tamil Nadu, Additional Advocate General Amit Anand Tiwari argued that vaccine mandate is the only way to mitigate health and economic impact as there is a "clear connection between vaccination and serious consequences." "This mandate is in the larger public interest. It is to provide security from higher outbreak", he submitted.
Maharashtra said that as the population density is high, it's not practical to maintain social distancing in the State. Hence, restrictions to decrease the risk of infection is reasonable. "A person cannot walk on the railway track and say that I will take care, it will affect the people in train also," submitted Maharashtra over the contention that taking vaccine should be a personal decision of an individual.
Advocate Prashant Bhushan, appearing for the petitioner, argued that it's their contention that the government doesn't have the power to issue a mandate but "considering the information that we have about the disease and vaccine, any mandate would be unconstitutional". "The government would have to demonstrate that the vaccine has been well studied and a person who already had Covid and has recovered would be posing more risk than a person who has just been vaccinated," he said. He said that there is some evidence that shows that the Covid vaccine may reduce severity but there is no evidence showing that vaccinated have a lower risk of transmitting the virus than an unvaccinated person. Moreover, the vaccine mimics the natural infection and if a person has already suffered from Covid-19, that person would clearly be more protected.
Arguing against the Solicitor General's submissions that there is a system in place, that there are various layers and committees for checking the vaccine, Advocate Bhushan said that it's a "bogus system" and even if it wasn't, it had to show the data. He cited Dr Aditi Bhargava's report that was placed before the senate in the US which said that comparing COVID 19 vaccine with other vaccines like polio is like comparing apples with oranges as they are different, one is RNA based and the other is DNA based. "Most DNA viruses mutate very slow once vaccinated there is lifetime immunity but in the case of RNA (Covid) they mutate very fast and the vaccine is not enough so it cannot be eradicated as we see in cases of flu," he said.
Bhushan also cited a parliamentary committee report on the functioning of committees dealing with the approval of vaccines. The report said that there is violation, fabrication, narrated in case of multiple drugs. "It's my life, it's my decisions. I have to weigh before getting vaccines," submitted Bhushan.
The court said that both sides submitted a lot of data supporting their arguments and now it will have to decide on what to rely and pass orders accordingly.
