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A plea has been moved in the Supreme Court for the disclosure of clinical trial data for vaccines being administered to children in India. Apart from this, the plea has sought a stay on the coercive Covid-19 vaccine mandates introduced by several states and private establishments, including schools, for children in the 15-18 age group.
The plea has been filed by a former member of the National Technical Advisory Group of Immunization, Dr Jacob Puliyel. In the plea, he sought ad-interim directions in the writ petition earlier filed by him for directions to publicize the data relating to clinical trials and efficacy of the vaccines administered to Indians for the Covid-19 pandemic.
The plea said the Ministry of Health Family Welfare notification dated December 27 on Covid-19 vaccination has been used by several states to force vaccination of children in the 15-18 age group. The application was filed by Senior Advocate Prashant Bhushan.
The application said the Government guidelines were issued only a few days after a press conference on December 24 attended by vaccination drive chief Vinod K Paul, Indian Council of Medical Research chief Balram Bhargava, and Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan. The December 24 announcement was that there isn’t any scientific basis yet to necessitate paediatric vaccination.
It was also stated in the application that there is a complete u-turn due to which the scientific basis seems to have altered and within three days guidelines were issued by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare for vaccinating children.
Recently, a news article reported that some schools in Karnataka were making vaccination mandatory for children and said that they will not be allowed to sit in board examinations if they do not get vaccinated.
The applicant mentioned the vaccine mandate and said the Government of Haryana notified that vaccinations of eligible persons (more than 15 years) are mandatory. In Andhra Pradesh’s Kadapa district, vaccinations have been made mandatory for eligible children.
There were some notice letters that were addressed to the ‘The Principal Secretaries/Secretaries WCD/SJE (All States/UTs)’ from the Ministry of Women and Child Development stating that vaccinations are compulsory for children.
The applicant said the current available evidence clearly shows that the risk versus benefit calculation does not support administering rushed and experimental Covid-19 vaccines to children, who have virtually no risk from Covid-19, yet face known and unknown risks from the vaccines. Non-disclosure of phase 3 trial results in adults and children for vaccines being administered in India.
Dr Puliyel stated in his plea that Covid-19 vaccines do not prevent infection nor transmission as established by peer-reviewed scientific studies. Nor are they effective against new variants.
According to Dr Puliyel, the data and scientific studies in countries where children have been given Covid vaccines show that the vaccines have serious and significant adverse effects, which outweigh the adverse effects due to the Covid infection itself.