The UK hasn't validated vaccine certificates generated through India’s CoWin app, which has been widely publicised by the highest levels of the Indian government, including on several occasions by Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself, whose photo one can find on vaccine certificates issued in India.
The United Kingdom on Wednesday updated its list of authorised vaccines, whose takers won’t need to undergo mandatory quarantine upon arrival, as it included Covishield in the new set of jabs approved in the nation.
“…Formulations of the 4 listed vaccines, such as AstraZeneca Covishield, AstraZeneca Vaxzevria and Moderna Takeda, qualify as approved vaccines,” stated the UK government.
Covishield, however, didn't feature in the original list published earlier, creating outrage in the South Asian nation.
As part of the UK's rules unveiled on 18 September (set to kick in on 4 October), incoming foreign travellers inoculated with the Oxford/AstraZeneca (Vaxzevria), Pfizer/BioNTech or Janssen vaccines (available later this year) qualified for exemption from mandatory quarantine upon arrival in the country.
Both Covishield and Vaxzevria are variants of the vaccine developed by British-Swedish pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca.
While the updated rules (notified today) mentioned Covishield as being approved in the UK, they didn’t list India among countries whose public health authority could issue a vaccination certificate, implying that Indians inoculated with Covishield will have to undergo a “mandatory” 10-day quarantine and take three COVID tests, before and after entering the country.
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The absence of Covishield in the 18 September list was discussed during the 21 September meeting between Indian foreign minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar and the British foreign secretary on the sidelines of the ongoing United Nations General Assembly in New York.
Indian foreign secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla also warned of “reciprocal measures” against the UK if it didn’t recognise Covishield, while addressing a press briefing on Tuesday.
“Now, the basic issue is that here is a vaccine Covishield, which is a licensed product of a UK company manufactured in India, of which we have provided, supplied five million doses to the UK at the request of the government of the UK,” stated Shringla.
“We understand that this has been used in the National Health System and therefore, non-recognition of Covishield is a discriminatory policy and does impact on those of us our citizens travelling to the United Kingdom,” he also added.
Later in the day, the British High Commission in India said in a statement that it was working with the Indian authorities to “explore how we could expand UK recognition of vaccine certification to people vaccinated by a relevant public health body in India”.
In its advisory on 18 September, the UK government also scrapped the “traffic light” system of categorising countries under "amber", "red" and "green" lists, replacing the three of them with an overarching red list. The new travel rules will kick in on 4 October.
At present, those entering the country from "amber" nations, which includes India, are required to undergo three COVID tests and a mandatory 10-day quarantine before being permitted to enter.
Meanwhile, many Indians have slammed the UK over its stand for not recognising the Indian vaccine certificate.