The United Kingdom (UK) Government’s decision to restrict Covid-19-related travels and ask travellers from India to undergo quarantine for ten days even if they have got both the doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, has left Indians fuming with a number of Opposition leaders calling the move “offensive”, “weird” and “racist” and “bizarre.”
Starting October 4, passengers not vaccinated under the “approved programmes in the UK (and UK overseas), Europe or US” must self-quarantine for ten days, as well as pay for two Covid tests.
Not impressed at the UK’s revised travel policy, senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor pulled out of several engagements in the country, which were part of launch events for his new book, to protest Britain’s “offensive” policy while his party colleague Jairam Ramesh took to Twitter saying that the decision was, “absolutely bizarre considering Covishield was originally developed in the UK and the Serum Institute, Pune has supplied doses to that country too! This smacks of racism.”
The Congress leaders’ reaction was in response to a message by aviation analyst Alex Macheras who tweeted about the UK Government’s move for 10-day home quarantine and tests for vaccinated people from Africa, South America and countries including India, the UAE, Turkey, Jordan, Thailand and Russia.
Responding to the tweet, Tharoor said: “Because of this I have pulled out of a debate at the Cambridge Union and out of launch events for the UK edition of my book #TheBattleOfBelonging (published there as #TheStruggleForIndiasSoul). It is offensive to ask fully vaccinated Indians to quarantine. The Brits are reviewing!”
Under these rules, only people who have got both shots of a double-dose vaccine such as Oxford-AstraZeneca, Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna or the single shot Janssen vaccine “under an approved vaccination programme in the UK, Europe, US or the UK’s vaccine programme overseas” will be considered fully vaccinated.
The rules also consider who have received jabs under public health bodies in Australia, Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Bahrain, Brunei, Canada, Dominica, Israel, Japan, Kuwait, Malaysia, New Zealand, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea or Taiwan as fully vaccinated.
The people cited above said the change in UK rules will mostly affect students, who are now returning in large numbers to British universities or travelling to Britain to start new courses. The change will mean they will have to pay extra for more tests and to quarantine.
The Indian side has also been insisting on mutual recognition of vaccination certificates in negotiations with other countries. The people said New Delhi will be in a better position to press this issue once travel to India also starts opening up.
The new system is expected to stay in place for at least a year with the next review only scheduled for early 2022.
The European Union (EU) has left it to individual member States to decide on acceptance of Indian vaccination certificates and more than a dozen members have recognised Covishield.