The court affirmed the sufficiency of COVISHIELD identification in vaccination certificates and recognized the government's framework for addressing expatriates' vaccination needs.

JUDGMENT

SHAJI P. CHALY, J.

This Public Interest Litigation is filed by two Indian expatriates working in Saudi Arabia seeking a writ of mandamus directing the Union of India and the State of Kerala to provide complete name of the COVISHIELD vaccine in the vaccination certificate i.e., Oxford- AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine; to issue a direction to the respondents to include the passport number as the identification number in the vaccination certificate for all persons vaccinated in India; and a writ of mandamus directing the respondents to ensure that Covaxine is recognised internationally and accepted by as many countries as possible, including the World Health Organization (WHO) in their emergency vaccination list.

2. The case projected by the petitioners is that COVISHIELD and Covaxin are the vaccines now being administered in India towards the protection of Covid-19 infections. COVISHIELD is manufactured locally by Serum Institute of India in partnership with Oxford University and AstraZeneca. The manner in which the vaccine is administered and the standard operating procedure made by the respective Governments to administer the same are also stated in the writ petition.

3. It is also submitted that the Airspace of Saudi Arabia was closed to India for 14 months and finally in May, 2021, it has issued travel guidelines for the persons travelling to the said country, with strict travel and quarantine conditions. According to the petitioners, India is still blacklisted due to the increased number of Covid cases. There are about 30 lakhs of Non Resident Indians working in Saudi Arabia in various walks of life and in order to relax the travel restrictions, it requires a non-immune person to undergo institutional quarantine by bearing the cost of quarantine from his own pocket. Therefore, according to the petitioners, if the said conditions are applied to the Indian expatriates, they will have to stay outside India for 14 days and then enter Saudi Arabia and undergo institutional quarantine for 7 days at Saudi Arabia at their own expenses. If such an exercise is to be undertaken by an expatriate, he will have to spend around Rs.2,00,000/- to reach the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Ext.P4 is the travel guidelines issued by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

4. The further case of the petitioner is that COVID-19 vaccine, codenamed AZD1222, is sold under the brand name COVISHIELD. As per the website of the Serum Institute, the medicinal name of COVISHIELD vaccine is ChAdOx1nCov-19 CoronaVirus Vaccine (Recombinant). It is also stated that COVISHIELD vaccine manufactured by Serum Institute of India and COVID-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca are CoronaVirus vaccines and therefore, those two vaccines are one and the same. But, the vaccination certificate issued by the Government of India does not contain the complete name of the vaccine i.e., Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine. The sum and substance of the contention advanced by the petitioner is that the respondents, who are duty bound to protect the interests of its citizens and to recognize the difficulties faced by the expatriates, ought to have taken steps to include the name of vaccine in the certificate as is specified above.

5. The petitioners have also submitted that at present, in the vaccination certificate issued by the Government of India, only the Aadhar number of the persons is included as identification and that the method of identification via Aadhar is well and good for domestic purposes, but for identification internationally, the Government of other countries accept passport number as more acceptable identification.

6. It is further submitted that as a result of omission of the passport number from the vaccination papers, a large number of Non Resident Indians, who were back home when the Covid related travel ban was in force, could not leave India amid the change in fresh and new guidelines by different countries to have passport details in the vaccination certificates. Therefore, the petit