Snehal Upadhyay-
Published on: September 7, 2021, at 11:27 IST
The Kerala High Court has issued directions to the Central Government to make essential provisions instantly in the CoWIN portal to enable for those people who want to take the second dose of Covishield vaccine after four weeks.
The Single Bench of Justice P.B. Suresh Kumar was dealing with a Writ Petition which was filed by Kitex Garments Limited and Kitex Childrenswear Limited of Kochi.
The petition seeked to get orders to permit its workers to get a second dose of vaccination without finishing the stipulated time gap between the two doses of 84 days.
The Court observed that the Centre had permitted vaccination and relaxed the time gap between both the doses for the students who wanted to go foreign for educational purposes, for those who had jobs in the foreign countries and for athletes, sportspersons and accompanying staff of Indian contingent who were participating and attending the Olympic Games at Tokyo.
The Court further observed that the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare declared that vaccination was voluntarily and there was no compulsion made on anyone. Whereas the time gap between two doses was made for better protection from infection was considered to be advisory and not a necessity.
The Court stated, “In other words, when people have even the right to refuse to accept vaccine, there is absolutely no reason why the State should take a stand that they (petitioners) shall not be permitted to accept the second dose, if they choose to do so after four weeks in terms of the original protocol of the vaccine for their early protection, especially when they themselves are procuring the vaccine by spending money from their pockets.”
The Court also observed that the State Government has also relaxed the time intervals for certain people who had to abroad and that too without the concurrence of the Centre hence, the Government had allowed all those classes of persons to exercise the choice between early protection and better protection from Covid infection.
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