‘Must administer 2nd Covaxin jab in 6 wks’: Delhi HC

The submission came in response to the court’s observation that there was an “urgent need” to vaccinate people with the second dose of Covaxin within six weeks.

The Delhi government on Friday told the Delhi high court that it planned inoculations by Covaxin based on the assurance by the manufacturer, Bharat Biotech, that the national capital will be given 500,000 doses in May and “four times that in June”.

The court was hearing three pleas filed by people who were finding it difficult to get the second dose of Covaxin after getting the first jab. (HT photos)

The submission came in response to the court’s observation that there was an “urgent need” to vaccinate people with the second dose of Covaxin within six weeks. “People cannot be left in lurch,” justice Rekha Palli said.

The judge said there was an urgent need for the authorities to spell out the time to administer the second dose considering the Delhi government’s submission that 150,000 people have been administered the first dose between the age group of 18-44 years.

“..Specially in view of the submission of Respondent no 1 (Delhi government) that 1.5 lakh people between the age group of 18-44 years have been administered the first dose, there is an urgent need to vaccinate the people with 2nd dose within six weeks,” the court said.

It also questioned the city government for not taking a timely decision to stop the administration of the first dose in the city.

“Even though you were well aware you did not stop it. When you already knew on May 12 that the doses were not coming, why did you not stop it..They (the Delhi government) were getting too optimistic that they would get it (the vaccines). They were overconfident... Had you been a little wiser…,” justice Palli remarked.

The court was hearing three pleas filed by people who were finding it difficult to get the second dose of Covaxin after getting the first jab.

According to Delhi government’s vaccine bulletin on Friday, the government-run vaccination centres have less than a day’s stock of Covaxin for the 45+ age group, even though its present stock of Covishield is expected to last another 28 days.

For the 18-45 years age group, all 368 Delhi government centres -- administering Covaxin and Covishield -- have been shut for about two weeks after they ran out of stock.

Advocate Anuj Aggarwal, additional standing counsel for the Delhi government, told the court that they continued to vaccinate because the Centre told them not to set aside any doses. He also said that since they were promised the adequate amount of Covaxin doses, they inoculated the people accordingly.

To this the court said, “So as the Delhi government, you are saying that you can’t do anything? Give us a clear stand”.

Aggarwal told the court that the supply needs to be streamlined, and added that the Delhi government issued a circular on June 3, mandating that next doses supplied will be used only for administering second doses.

Central government standing counsel Anurag Alhuwalia told the court that it had dispatched the vaccine, and left it to the discretion of the state governments to use it for first dose or second dose.

The court asked both the Centre and the Delhi government to look into the shortage while remarking that it would not get into a blame game at this stage.

The court asked the Centre and Delhi government to take instructions and posted the matter for hearing on June 7.

The company has a production capacity of about 10-15 million doses a month. On May 20, it announced it was ramping up production with additional capacity of 200 million doses per year, taking the annual production to close to 1 billion.