SC Rejects Plea for Door-to-Door Vaccination

Manas Dasgupta

NEW DELHI, Sept 8: Even as the cumulative number of COVID-19 vaccine doses administered in the country crossed 70 crores, the Supreme Court on Wednesday shot down a plea to direct the government to immediately embark on a door-to-door COVID-19 vaccination policy.

Strongly admonishing the petitioners demanding door-to-door vaccination policy, the court said such pleas were the product of ignorance of the diversity of the country and complexity of governance.

A Bench led by Justice DY Chandrachud asked the petitioner, Youth Bar Association of India, whether it wanted the court to direct the government to scrap its current vaccination drive when over 60% of the population had already received at least one dose of the vaccine and start down the path of door-to-door vaccination.

“Do the same conditions prevail in Ladakh and Kerala, or Uttar Pradesh? Are the challenges same in urban parts of India and the rural areas? There is a lack of understanding about the diversity of the country, about the complexity of governance. You cannot ask the same thing, in one stroke of the brush, for the entire country… Over 60% of the population has taken one dose of the vaccine, it is not for us now to turn around and say scrap that and go for door-to-door vaccination,” Justice Chandrachud addressed the counsel on the petitioner’s side.

The petition had sought a general order to the Centre to begin door-to-door vaccination for the disabled, the aged, those unable to approach vaccination centres, among others. It asked the court to direct the government to frame a Standard Operating Procedure for administration of door-to-door vaccines. The petition had also asked for a round-the-clock portal for the purpose of this type of vaccination.

“Vaccination is already under way. The court is monitoring it in a suo motu petition… The Supreme Court has constituted a National Task Force. At this stage it is difficult to give a general direction considering the diversity of this country… We should not impinge upon the administrative power of the State to give vaccine, including door-to-door,” the court said.

It, however, gave the petitioner liberty to approach the Ministry of Health with the suggestions.

In a separate case, the court admonished another petitioner for presuming that every death caused during the pandemic was due to the negligence of the State. “We cannot start with the presumption that every death was due to negligence… Our country has gone through an unprecedented pandemic,” Justice Chandrachud addressed petitioner Deepak Raj Singh’s counsel advocate Sriram Parakkat.

This Public Interest Litigation petition had sought action against authorities for committing gross negligence leading to the deaths of patients during the second wave of COVID-19. The petition had urged the court to direct the government to initiate a compensation scheme for those affected by the pandemic.

Parakkat, however, said he had filed the petition in May, when the second wave had reached its peak. “The petition was filed in the first week of May based on the situation then,” Parakkat said finally opting to withdraw the plea.

India, meanwhile, reported 37,875 new infections of COVID-19 over the past 24 hours on Wednesday taking the total tally of cases to 3,30,95,450 according to the Union Health Ministry. The death in the country toll has risen to 441,411, with 369 fatalities reported on Tuesday. India’s active caseload currently stands at 3,91,256, as per the ministry bulletin.

With the Gulf region slowly opening up to tourists to overcome its COVID-19 battered economies, airfare charges have also skyrocketed for one-way travel to various destinations.

Foreign airline companies have hiked ticket rates which many believe would help them to narrow their losses. However the resultant is that genuine flyers planning to return to various Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) nations, especially the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are feeling the pinch for having to pay excessive rates.

Previously several expatriates were forced to book tickets in charter flights at an exorbitant price between ₹2 lakh and ₹4 lakh to return to their jobs.

Bulgaria has one of the highest coronavirus death rates in the 27-nation European Union and is facing a new, rapid surge of infections due to the more infectious delta variant. Despite that, people in this Balkan nation are the most hesitant in the bloc to get vaccinated against COVID-19.

Only 20% of adults in Bulgaria, which has a population of 7 million, have so far been fully vaccinated. That puts it last in the EU, which has an average of 69 % fully vaccinated.

Israel, once a front-runner in the global race to move on from Covid-19, is now one of the world’s biggest pandemic hot spots. The country that was once predicted to be the first to vaccinate its entire population had the highest per-capita caseload in the last week, according to figures compiled by Johns Hopkins University. Its world-beating inoculation rate, meanwhile, has tumbled down the league table.

The nation of 9 million became the test case for reopening society and the economy in April when much of Europe and the U.S. were still in some form of lockdown. Yet Israel now shows how the calculus is changing in places where progress was fastest. It’s no longer just about whether people get coronavirus, but also how badly they get it and ensuring that vaccines are still working as the highly infectious Delta variant threatens to undermine immunity.

More recently, it has led the way when it comes to vaccinating children and rolling out a booster shot of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine after research suggested reduced efficacy over time. Around 100,000 Israelis are getting inoculated every day, the vast majority of them with a third shot.

“If you are able to maintain life without lockdown, and to avoid very high numbers of hospitalizations and death, then this is what life with Covid looks like,” a senior specialist in infectious diseases said. Since April, Israel has fallen from first to 33rd in Bloomberg’s vaccine tracker of populations considered fully vaccinated. The program plateaued amid hesitancy from some in the Orthodox Jewish and Arab communities. About 61% of Israelis have been given two doses, lower than in European laggards earlier in the year such as France and Spain.

Following the spread of the Delta variant over the summer, Israel has seen cases climb, reaching an all-time high of 11,316 daily cases on September 2. The number of people falling seriously sick and being hospitalized, though, has risen less than it did during the last coronavirus wave, peaking at 751 in late August, compared with 1,183 in mid-January. The trend is now downward.

Infections jumped because of the prevalence of cases among the unvaccinated, especially children. There were also so-called breakthrough infections in those who have been vaccinated, and the drop in efficacy of vaccines.

As of Sept. 6, at least 2.6 million people in Israel, around 28% of the population, have now had the booster shot of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, according to the Israeli Health Ministry. That rises to at least 64% for people in age brackets over 60. Significantly, the booster shot is also available for anyone over 12 who was vaccinated at least five months ago.

The World Health Organization’s heat map puts Israel in the top five in the wider European region. The rolling data show areas with the highest seven-day infection rates are in Scotland, where 68% of the population are fully vaccinated. Cases surged after restrictions were lifted and then schools returned from their summer break in mid-August.