PIL filed in SC for China to share information on COVID-19

A PIL has been filed by an organisation, 'Doctors For You' in the Supreme Court seeking a direction to the Union Government to make a representation to China and procure necessary information on COVID-19 to facilitate the development of an effective antidote for it.

The petitioner also sought a direction to the Centre to call upon the World Health Organisation to initiate a probe immediately for its delay in notifying to the world community of the pandemic.

"The Chinese govemment has deliberately hidden and censored information relating to the novel Corona Virus and its COVID-19 strain and silenced the doctors who tried to raise an alarm," it claimed.

The Mumbai-based organisation also wanted the Union government to use diplomatic channels to ask China to share various strains and mutations that have been found in the vicinity of Wuhan, to assist and collaborate in ongoing research to the potential line of treatments to cure the affected persons and provide with details of vaccines in the process to abate its effects.

It said the People's Republic of China should share the epidemiology, evolution, clinical data and full extent of data on the novel Corona Virus which has put at stake the Right to Life guaranteed by the Constitution and to share the statistics and other indicators based upon which the Chinese Govemment directed the reopening of Wuhan wet markets and controlled the virus only to areas of the central city of Wuhan.

"It will further help the Indian medical scientists and doctors to research and have better chances of developing of antidote," the PIL said.