SC defers order on plea for probe into Covid jabs’ ‘adverse effects’

The Supreme Court reserved orders on a petition for an independent probe into Covid vaccine deaths, as the Centre reports adverse effects below 1%.

New Delhi

SC defers order on plea for probe into Covid jabs’ ‘adverse effects’

The Supreme Court on Thursday reserved orders on a petition demanding an independent investigation into the deaths allegedly caused by the Covid vaccination even as the Centre said that the total reported instances of “adverse effects” were less than 1% of the doses administered.

Claiming that vaccines, like any other medicine, has side effects, the Centre told the court that the vaccine helped save lives of millions of citizens and India’s protocol of voluntary vaccination was globally accepted.

The court was hearing a petition filed by the parents of two young women who died in 2021, after being administered the Covid vaccine. The petition demanded an independent investigation into the deaths and an expert medical board to prepare a protocol for early detection and timely treatment of adverse effects following immunization (AEFI).

Citing data of adverse effects of AstraZeneca vaccine in Europe that was sold as Covishield in India, the petitioners told the court that India has not disclosed the correct facts on the fatalities associated with the vaccine even as the AEFI cases related to AstraZeneca vaccine was seven-fold in the United Kingdom. “You believe the UK has disclosed everything and your country has not done it. You trust the data given by the UK and don’t trust the data given by our country,” said the bench of justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta.

Advocate Prashant Bhushan who appeared for another set of victims said, “There is a seven-fold difference between the AEFIs reported in UK and in India. We want a probe, independent of the government, to conduct a study.”

The bench said, “We are not experts. We will leave it to the experts to do the study,” as it directed the petitioners to give written notes of their submissions in two weeks.

Additional solicitor general (ASG) Aishwarya Bhati, who represented the Centre, submitted that every adverse effect was examined by doctors at each level. “Any medicine can have side effects. The effect of a drug can vary across different populations in Europe, Africa or Asia. These were unfortunate times we did best what we could do.”

The figures supplied by Centre showed that of the 219.86 crore doses of Covid-19 vaccines administered in the country till November 19, 2022, 92,114 AEFIs were reported. Of this, 89,332 (0.0041%) were minor AEFIs while only 2,782 (0.00013%) resulted in serious or severe AEFI, including death.

Senior advocate Colin Gonsalves, appearing for the two parents,pointed out that the government has suppressed the figures and even these deaths were avoidable had there been informed consent of its after-effects. “Austria and the whole of Europe banned this vaccine as information about its adverse effects were available at the start of the pandemic. But here vaccine was administered compulsorily with the government making vaccine jabs compulsory for reporting to work, visiting hospitals or travel by air,” Gonsalves said.

The Centre said that the concept of informed consent is inapplicable to the voluntary use of drug such as vaccine. Bhati said, “On voluntary vaccination, I think my friends have not looked at China to understand what compulsory means.” She pointed out that while it was a person’s free choice to take the vaccine, one could not be allowed to go to a public place without mask or getting vaccinated.

“This vaccine saved many lives. In the first wave, when vaccines were not available, the number of deaths was mind-boggling. This is why the government was persuading and encouraging citizens as everything came to a halt and every citizen was being affected,” the law officer argued.

The daughters of the two petitioners died within a month of receiving the first dose of Covishield. In one case, the cause of death was attributed to Thrombosis and Thrombocytopenia Syndrome (TTS) which is a rare AEFI related to administration of Covid-19 vaccines reported globally. In India, 50 AEFI cases of TTS was reported with about a dozen resulting in death. The Centre pointed out that this was less compared to 105 TTS cases reported in Canada and 173 cases in Australia.

Bhati said, “The world and the nation went through a difficult phase. But any drug can have side-effects, but for that, the remedy lies elsewhere.”

“In India also, we can see that the effect of Covid-19 across India was not uniform. Different states have different geographical features and it also depends, who has a better immunity,” said the bench as it closed arguments for passing orders.