Telangana High Court Disposes Plea Demanding COVID Vaccine For Advocates/Court Staff On Priority

The Bench of Chief Justice Hima Kohli and Justice A. Abhishek Reddy took into account the submission made by the Advocate General that the priority list has been drawn by the Central Government, which has been adopted by the State of Telangana.

He further submitted that as per the priority list, in the first round COVID-Anti Virus Vaccine shall be administered to the health workers, followed by front line workers in the second round and those, who are 50 years and above with co-morbidities or other special conditions in the third round.

To this, the Court said,

"If any Advocate or the court staff fall in the aforesaid categories, they shall be given due priority in terms of the Guidelines framed by the Central Government in that regard."

Thus, the plea was disposed of in the above terms.

It may be noted that the Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) on Monday (18^th January) wrote to Shri Ravi Shankar Prasad, Union Minister for Law and Justice, requesting for the extension of the vaccination programme to Judges, judicial staff and members of the legal fraternity, and to include them in the category of "frontline workers".

The letter commences by highlighting that government has launched the world's largest vaccination programme and that the same is presently being confined to "defined frontline workers and will extend to others in a phased manner".

Earlier this month, the Tamil Nadu Advocates' Association (TNAA) wrote letter to the Union and State Health Ministry, as well as the Chief Justices of the Madras High and Supreme Court, demanding that lawyers and judges be included in the priority list of people who are qualified to get the COVID-19 vaccinations in the first phase of its administration.

About the Vaccines

India's top drug regulator, Drugs Controller General of India's (DCGI) earlier this month approved Serum Institute of India's 'Covishield' and Bharat Biotech's 'Covaxin' for restricted emergency use against COVID-19 in the country.

The 2 Companies rolled out their vaccines last Saturday i.e., on 16^th January 2021.

It is important to note that Covishield is a version of the vaccine developed by the University of Oxford in collaboration with Swedish-British drugmaker AstraZeneca, that has already got emergency use approval in the UK.

Covaxin is India's only indigenous Covid-19 vaccine and which has been developed by Hyderabad-based Bharat Biotech in collaboration with the Indian Council of Medical Research's National Institute of Virology, Pune.

In related news, Activist Saket S. Gokhale has moved the Bombay High Court against the Drugs Controller General of India, urging that the safety and efficacy trial results of Bharat Biotech's Covid-19 vaccine "Covaxin" be made public.

The petition states that whereas vaccinations in India begin from January 16, and it is being claimed that Covaxin is safe and provides a robust immune response, the data submitted by the Company in this behalf has not been made available in the public domain.

He has contended that the vaccine is still in phase 3 of clinical trial and hence, there remains a great possibility of harm to the life of members of the general public that are being administered this vaccine.

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