A Division Bench of the Kerala High Court on Monday asked the Centre to inform the court when it could supply the Covid vaccines ordered by the State government.

When a petition challenging the Centre's Liberalised Pricing and Accelerated National Covid-19 Vaccination Strategy and other Covid vaccination related cases came up for hearing, the Bench asked the Centre what was the rationale behind its stand that the State should administer the vaccines free of cost to the people in the age group of 18 to 44 on its own, especially when the Centre did not supply the vaccines for these group free of cost. The court also reminded the Centre that it was not time to talk about federalism.

The court also orally pointed out that the cost for free vaccination for the whole population would come to around ₹34,000 crore if reckoned by the price at which the Centre procured the vaccine. The court asked the Centre why not it could utilise the surplus dividend of ₹53,510 crore received from the Reserve Bank of India for administering free vaccination, at least for the poor.

When the counsel for the Centre submitted that it was in the realm of the Centre' policy decision, the court said that it was telling the policy-makers that they had so much money and so why did not they do it. In fact, the court did not want to influence the Centre's policy decision.

State Attorney KV Sohan submitted that the government was taking all efforts to ensure that everyone was vaccinated but were adversely affected due to the short supply of vaccines. The State had already placed a purchase order for 1 crore doses of Covid vaccine including 70 lakhs doses of Covishield and 30 lakhs doses of Covaxin. Even though the order for 1 crore doses was placed, it was further communicated by the Centre that vaccine supply other than through Centre's channels would be limited for a couple of months.

Therefore, the State government had initiated the process for inviting global tender for purchase of Covid vaccines. The vaccination of 18 to 44 years also was totally dependent on supply to the States.

The total doses needed to complete 2 doses of vaccine in this age group of those aged 45 years and above was 1,59,71,710. As many as 25,954 beneficiaries in the age group of 18-44 had been administered with the first dose of Covid vaccine. 1.41 crore doses were required to complete the first dose administration to the group and another 1.5 crore doses for the second dose. Thus, the total number of vaccines required to complete 2 doses of vaccination in the age group of 18-44 group was 2.91 croes. Besides, 2,43,028 additional doses were required to complete 2 doses for Health Care Workers and Front-Line Workers, he submitted.

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