Three non-profit companies have failed in their court bid to stop the government from making available Covid-19 vaccinations.

Covid Core Alliance, Transformative Health Justice and Free the Children – Save the Nation, supported by some doctors, wanted a final order compelling the Minister of Health, the acting DG of Health, the SA Health Products Regulatory Authority (Sahpra) and Treasury, to ‘cease and desist’ vaccinations and to properly investigate their effects.

In effect, the applicants sought broad orders to halt Covid vaccination programmes. But GroundUp reports that Gauteng High Court (Pretoria) Judge Norman Davis dismissed the application, with costs.

He said the applicants did not have the right to prevent others who do not share their beliefs or opinions from being vaccinated.

‘It has not been established that the harm which the applicants aspire to prevent, actually exists, and even if it may exist in rare or exceptional cases, the benefit of vaccination far outweighs that harm,’ he said.

Should they wish to have vaccinations deregistered, they had alternative remedies available to them in terms of legislation.

Usurping the role of Sahpra would undermine its statutory authority and meant the court would cross the line of separation of powers ‘which could not be permitted,’ said Davis. 

The judge said the applicants’ grounds for the court action was that they had tried to draw attention to what they labelled ‘strange and unusual medical conditions’ which they said they had witnessed in patients who had had the vaccine, but were ignored by the authorities, according to the GroundUp report.

‘In general, they aver that there are otherwise healthy people, who, after receiving the vaccines, experience unexplainable changes to their blood cell structure or who have unexplainable foreign substances in their blood. They say further that some children who have been vaccinated have had their health impaired and some have even died as a result. They say there is no logic in administering vaccines in children with or without pre-existing conditions … They claim that to safeguard the nation, it is imperative to apply a precautionary rule and stop any vaccination,’ he said.

The applicants called several witnesses, including doctors, alternative medicine practitioners, a neurosurgeon and a gastroenterologist, and submitted ‘similar opinions expressed by certain health care practitioners and a substantial volume of internet articles’.

The CEO of Sahpra, in an affidavit, had submitted that the application was misguided and reliant on hearsay and, if the order was granted, it would undermine Sahpra’s role and responsibilities, and that this was not the first attempt by the applicants to stop the use of vaccines.

Sahpra had stressed that it was not unusual that a medicine or a vaccine caused some side effects.

With regard to Covid vaccines, their use had been supported by evidence from other regulatory authorities, including the World Health Organisation.

Davis said it was also ‘manifestly unfair’ that the vaccine manufacturers had not been joined in the application.

‘The qualifications and knowledge of the experts relied on by the applicants have seriously been placed in doubt … There are also grave doubts about the factual bases for the applicant’s conclusions and research methodology … I therefore accept the expert opinions relied on by the respondents and reject those relied on by the applicants.’

Davis ordered the applicants to pay the respondents costs, the GroundUp report says.

Full GroundUp report

Judgment

See also full Business Day report