The Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court on Thursday sought response from the Centre and the State in two public interest litigation petitions that sought production of oxygen in the State and strict implementation of the government order to allocate a minimum 50% of the bed strength in private hospitals for treating COVID-19 patients.
A Division Bench of Justices M.S. Ramesh and B. Pugalendhi observed that India was a pioneer in production of vaccines before COVID-19 and the world’s largest exporter of vaccines. Now, only two private manufacturers – Serum Institute of India and Bharat Biotech – were producing vaccines for COVID-19.
The vaccine manufacturing institutes owned by the government were not utilised.
When the government itself was having such facilities, they must be revived and put into effective use so that the government would be in a position to inoculate all people and need not bargain with private players at this difficult juncture.
Oxygen production
The court…