The plaintiffs had argued that unvaccinated children could be excluded from activities
The High Court has shot down a recent attempt made by a group of parents to halt the recent rollout of COVID-19 vaccines by the government for children aged 5-11 years.
In a decision released on Wednesday, Justice Rebecca Ellis said that the plaintiffs’ application for an interim order was being rejected for three reasons:
- there is no intent to exclude children from educational activities on the basis of vaccination status
- the health minister had made “an informed and reasonable assessment” that the benefits of vaccination outweighed the risks
- the negative consequences of stopping the vaccine rollout were more significant than the interim relief
“These [repercussions] included harm to the considerable number of New Zealanders who wish to vaccinate their children, the potential loss of up to half a million paediatric vaccine doses and damage to public confidence in the paediatric vaccine (especially among vulnerable communities),” the court said in the decision.
On 27 January, the court had heard affidavits from some of the parents who had filed a claim against Health Minister Andrew Little, COVID-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins and the head of Medsafe calling for the vaccine rollout to be suspended until a judicial review into the provisional consent granted by Medsafe was conducted. The NZ Herald reported that the plaintiffs expressed their fears that measures such as vaccine passports and exclusion from venues, which are currently imposed on adults, would soon become standard practice for children too.
Lawyer Nick Williams, acting for the group of eight plaintiffs, said the parents wanted to ensure that their children would not be denied access to activities in the community due to their unvaccinated status. One mother, who was concerned that her child would face exclusion from sports activities, said that in a statement published by the Herald that this “is simply not a normal life for a child.”
The group also stated its belief that, for children, the risk of harm from the vaccine outweighed the potential benefits.
While the Crown acknowledged the parents’ fears, it pointed out that the interests of the broader public were at stake, and that many parents were seeking to get their children vaccinated. Moreover, the Crown argued that the side effects of the vaccines were less significant than the effect of contracting COVID-19 for children aged 5-11.
Crown prosecutor Kate Wevers said in a statement published by the Herald that the plaintiffs were “free to choose not to vaccinate their children and shouldn’t be able to restrict others from the choice of vaccination themselves.” She added that under the COVID-19 Public Health Response protection framework, children under the age of 12 years and 3 months are not required to present a vaccine certificate.
