The Centre on Tuesday told the Supreme Court that the gradual lowering of the age group of people eligible for COVID–19 shots to now children between 12 and 14 years is part of its vaccination policy of “limited risk”.The government said the question of whether or not to administer paediatric vaccination is entirely the decision of the Executive and there is hardly room for judicial review.The decision to bring down the target population for paediatric vaccination from 15–17–year–old adolescents to children between 12–14 years was made after extensive deliberations with experts.The Centre was responding to a petition filed by Dr. Jacob Puliyel, a former member of National Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation represented by advocate Prashant Bhushan, who argued that the government had neglected to get an informed consent from people about vaccination by being opaque about vaccine trials and by not putting the entire data and inconsistencies up for public and independent scientific scrutiny. Mr. Bhushan said several States had even denied basic rights to citizens who were not vaccinated.
