The government of India has described U.K.’s decision to exclude vaccinated Indian travelers from its new travel guidelines as discriminatory. The government further warned of reciprocating the same measures.
Next month, the British government will allow fully vaccinated travelers from a list of countries to skip quarantine upon arrival, only for the exception of Indians who are fully vaccinated and will still be required to be quarantined, according to CNBC.
In the previous week, the U.K. eased travel restrictions for fully vaccinated individuals from 17 countries saying they would not have to stay in quarantine after arriving in England.
Read: More than 300,000 UK arrivals suspected of breaking quarantine rules
Upon arrival, travelers will be expected to show evidence that they received a full course of any of the Covid vaccines approved in the U.K. at least two weeks before their arrival. The approved vaccines are Oxford/AstraZeneca, Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, or Janssen.
The travel restrictions will be eased come Oct. 4th, 2021.
In India, the main vaccine being administered to citizens is AstraZeneca, however, it is manufactured locally by the Serum Institute of India under the name Covishield and has been approved for emergency use by the World Health Organization.
Reacting to the exemption of India from the U.K. list of countries not required to be quarantined, India’s Foreign Secretary Harsh V Shringla said,
“The basic issue is that there is a vaccine, Covishield, which is a licensed product of a U.K. company, manufactured in India. We have supplied 5 million doses to the U.K., at the request of the government of the U.K. We understand that this has been used in their national health system.”
“Therefore, non-recognition of Covishield is a discriminatory policy and does impact on those of our citizens traveling to the U.K.,” he added.
According to the U.K government, Indian travelers will still be required to quarantine after arriving in England and will be mandated to undergo three rounds of testing, regardless of their vaccination status.
According to Shringla, India’s External Affairs Minister, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, who is in New York for the United Nations General Assembly, has raised the issue “strongly” with U.K. Foreign Secretary Elizabeth Truss, according to Shringla.
India has administered more than 825 million vaccine doses in one of the world’s largest inoculation drives with almost 15% of the country’s eligible population receiving the two doses required to be considered fully vaccinated, according to online publication Our World In Data.
