BL Premium reports that the Department of Health’s deputy director-general for National Health Insurance, Nicholas Crisp, has rejected claims by activists that the department has deviated from scientific input and withheld information on how it has managed the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Health Justice Initiative (HJI) launched legal action last week in a bid to compel the government to disclose details of all the advisers it has consulted, the counsel received and how this input has been used to determine the decisions it has taken in response to Covid-19. The HJI said one of the reasons it was taking legal action was because its request for records from the health department, made in terms of the Promotion of Access to Information Act (PAIA), had been ignored. Crisp defended the department’s approach, saying all the advisories provided by the ministerial advisory committee on Covid-19 and its working groups had been published on the government’s coronavirus website as soon as the health department had determined how to respond to them. “I am personally responsible for ensuring that the advisories are posted once the minister has seen them, we have discussed them and worked out how to implement them,” claimed Crisp. He added that the department had not responded to the PAIA request because it had been too broad. The HJI has also launched a court bid to compel the health department to disclose details of the supply contracts it signed with coronavirus vaccine manufacturers Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson. The department is opposing the matter.

• Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Tamar Kahn at BusinessLive (subscriber access only)

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