New Delhi:
The Supreme Court on Monday sought responses from the Centre and others on a plea seeking directions for disclosure of data regarding clinical trials of COVID-19 vaccines.
A bench of justices L Nageswara Rao and Aniruddha Bose issued notice on the plea, and asked the Centre and others to respond to it within four weeks.
While hearing the plea, the bench referred to the problem of vaccine hesitancy in the country and asked advocate Prashant Bhushan, who was appearing for the petitioner, as to whether entertaining the petition would not create doubt in the minds of the citizens over vaccines.
While making it clear that neither it is an anti-vaccine petition nor the petitioner is seeking to stop Covid vaccination in the country, Bhushan said transparency on the issue was needed and disclosure of data would rather clear all the doubts.
The bench was hearing a plea seeking directions for disclosure of data on clinical trials of COVID-19 vaccines and also on post vaccination.
“In India, the manner in which vaccines have been licensed vitiates and even precludes the possibility that the vaccines can be evaluated objectively in the future. Under these circumstances the petitioner is forced to appeal to this court for public disclosure of trial data and post-vaccination data, as required by international medical norms,” the petition said.
Justice Rao, however, said he came to know that many doctors were saying that they were not aware on how the body would react to vaccines but said the court should not pass any order which creates more confusion as the situation is “very dangerous”.
“Nobody will be safe if everybody is not vaccinated and that is something that is being done across the world,” the bench said while supporting government decision to push people to get vaccinated.
However, the Supreme Court refused to intervene on a plea that vaccinations should not be made mandatory, saying that the steps were being taken by countries across the world to push vaccination and no measure should be taken that will fuel vaccine hesitancy.
The bench said such practices were being adopted by various countries across the world to push vaccination and the court should not interfere at this stage.
“Worldwide it is being done. We are facing a situation which we did not face in the last hundred years. As per World Health Organisation, vaccine hesitancy is one of the major problems facing the world. Would it not amount to throwing doubts in the mind of people if we pass any order,” the bench said.
Bhushan claimed vaccine hesitancy was among highly educated people with scientific knowledge and doubt about the efficacy of vaccines cannot be brushed aside and should be evaluated scientifically for which data was needed He also claimed there had been adverse impact of vaccines and more than 12,000 people died in the US.