In the judgment holding that the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Package: Insurance Scheme for Health Workers Fighting COVID-19 covers doctors who were not formally requisitioned by the government, the Supreme Court reflected on the scale of the COVID-19 crisis and the role played by doctors and health workers.

A bench of Justice PS Narasimha and Justice R Mahadevan said the pandemic's conditions could not be forgotten when deciding whether the services of healthcare professionals had been requisitioned under the law in 2020.

The Court described the onset of COVID-19 as “unprecedented in its global sweep and consequence” and noted that not since the 1918 influenza pandemic had a single infectious disease inflicted such disruption.

It observed that the pandemic exposed acute systemic fragi

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