UK says it is working with India on recognition of vaccine certificates

The new rules implied that people who had received both doses of the Covishield in India, would be considered unvaccinated

The United Kingdom is working with India on recognition of the Covid-19 vaccination certificates issued by Government of India, the British High Commission in New Delhi stated on Monday.

The UK signalled its willingness to discuss the issue with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government in New Delhi as its new travel rules drew flak in India. The issue is likely to come up when Modi and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson will hold a bilateral meet during their visit to Washington DC for separate meetings with American President Joe Biden.

The new travel rules recently introduced by the British Government refused to recognise people travelling to the UK as vaccinated even if they had received the both doses of the Covishield Covid-19 vaccines under the inoculation programme in India.

This triggered widespread condemnation in India, with senior Congress MP Shashi Tharoor protested, by pulling out of a debate at the Cambridge University as well as from another event to launch his new book in the UK. His party colleague Jairam Ramesh too said that the new UK travel rules smacked of racism.

“We are engaging with the government of India to explore how we could expand UK recognition of vaccine certification to people vaccinated by a relevant public health body in India,” a spokesperson of the British High Commission in New Delhi said. The UK is committed to opening up international travel “as soon as is practicable” and the new rules were a “further step to enable people to travel more freely again, in a safe and sustainable way, while protecting public health”, the spokesperson said.

Covishield was developed by the AstraZeneca PLC and the Oxford University and is being manufactured by the Serum Institute of India (SII) in India.

According to the British Government’s new travel rules, only the people who had been inoculated with the vaccines such as the ones developed by AstraZeneca, Pfizer or Moderna or the single shot one developed by Johnson and Johnson’s “under an approved vaccination program in the UK, Europe, US or UK vaccine programme overseas”, would be considered fully vaccinated. Besides, people inoculated under the programmes run by the public health authorities in Australia, Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Bahrain, Brunei, Canada, Dominica, Israel, Japan, Kuwait, Malaysia, New Zealand, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea or Taiwan would also be considered fully vaccinated.

The new rules, which will come into force on October 4, implied that people who had received both doses of the Covishield in India would be considered unvaccinated and hence would have to go through quarantine procedures on arrival in the UK.

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