Telangana High Court refuses to intervene in Covid vaccine reactions issue
Hyderabad: The Telangana High Court refused on Thursday to intervene in the matter of adverse reactions to some individuals in the Covid-19 vaccination programme.
Responding to a batch of 24 public interest litigations seeking court intervention to ascertain safety aspects of the vaccine, a division bench of Chief Justice Hima Kohli and Justice B. Vijaysen Reddy made it clear that no such intervention was appropriate at this stage. The PILs have also urged the court to issue directions to the state government for more steps to contain the pandemic spread.
“Let the government roll it out. If anybody doesn`t want to take the vaccine, leave them alone. There is no compulsion," the Chief Justice said.
The bench appreciated the efforts of the state government in dealing with the pandemic from the very start. However, the lab testing seemed to be less. "When Delhi conducts not less than 40,000 tests a day, how come a bigger state like Telangana is conducting only around 50,000 tests, that too only after directions from the High Court," the CJ asked.
The court has closed 19 out of the 24 PILs before it on the matter of testing and stressed that the vaccination drive is already on.
While closing the pleas, the court advised the petitioners that any PIL should not be adversarial in nature. The idea should rather be to resolve public grievances with a right frame of mind. It kept open two PILs seeking fresh provision as regards equipment given to Covid warriors and frontline workers and billing for Covid tests and treatment. Another three pleas were on different subjects.
The court directed the government to file an affidavit placing on record, in a tabular form, the number of Covid-19 tests conducted between January 25 and February 10. It must provide district-wise figures of tests and the RTPCR tests with the break up.
It also sought to know from the government the total number of sero surveillance conducted since June 2000.
The Chief Justice directed Advocate-General B.S. Prasad to give a ground report on the second strain of Covid-19 brought in by travellers from the UK. The A-G replied that four cases of the new strain were found in the state and these carriers were identified, isolated, and treated.
The court said the details it sought should be provided by the government on or before February 19. The cases were adjourned to February 25.
