The Supreme Court on Friday asked a healthcare provider from Tamil Nadu to make a representation before the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare to ramp-up the COVID-19 vaccination drive.
A Bench led by Chief Justice of India Sharad A. Bobde urged the Ministry to consider the representation by Dr. S. Gurushankar, represented by senior advocate K. Subramanian, “as expeditiously as possible”.
“K. Subramanian, learned senior counsel appearing for the petitioner, prays for withdrawal of this petition with liberty to make a representation to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India, New Delhi. Prayer is allowed. The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare may consider the representation as expeditiously as possible. Accordingly, the writ petition is dismissed as withdrawn with the liberty aforesaid,” the order said.
Dr. Gurushankar is the chairman of S.R. Trust, a public trust which runs the Meenakshi Mission Hospital and Research Centre in Madurai. He is also president of the Tamil Nadu chapter of the Association of Healthcare Providers of India.
The petition said the government should increase the number of persons vaccinated in a session from current count of 100.
It said the number of sessions and vaccination sites ought to increase. The government should put in place the sufficient infrastructure and logistic planning to develop herd immunity to the virus in the population at the earliest.
The petition said statistics clearly demonstrate that the vaccination programme was not proceeding according to the original estimate. In fact, the progress was “very slow”, it noted.
“If India plans to vaccinate the target of 300 million people by July 2021, it would require 33,333 sessions to be held every day of the week,” it said.
