Corona is not gone yet. The mask is still necessary, it is still as important to get the vaccine as it was before. But just imagine how it would feel if you were kept isolated even after getting the vaccine. Let us tell you that this is being seen in the UK, where Indian people who have got the covishield vaccine are being kept in isolation. Under the UK vaccine rule, Indian travelers who have received both doses of Covishield will be considered without vaccination and will have to undergo self-isolation for 10 days.
The UK has changed its COVID-19 travel rules, putting Indians who have been vaccinated against covishield in the ‘non-vaccinated’ category. While it has relaxed rules for vaccinees with two doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, the same version of the vaccine being manufactured in India by the Pune-based Serum Institute of India has been left out of the list. Well India will protest against the UK’s new travel rules that those who have been vaccinated against covishield will be classified as ‘non-vaccinated’. From 4 October, the United Kingdom will welcome fully vaccinated travelers from a number of new countries under the UK under rules notified by it on 17 September.
This includes Australia, Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Bahrain, Brunei, Canada, Dominica, Israel, Japan, Kuwait, Malaysia, New Zealand, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan. Only those who have been vaccinated abroad will be fully vaccinated under an approved immunization program in the UK, Europe, US or UK vaccine programme. India is not included in the list of countries whose vaccines are recognized in the UK. This means that Indians who have been vaccinated with Oxford-AstraZeneca’s covishield Vaccine and Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin will be subject to the same restrictions as those who have not been vaccinated.
Apart from this The UK government’s new international travel rules, which recognize people not vaccinated in India as “fully vaccinated”, have been blasted as “offensive”, “bizarre” and “racist”. The new rules mean people vaccinated in India will still have to home quarantine for 10 days in the UK, while those vaccinated in other countries will not. Aware of the backlash on social media after senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor pulled out of the Cambridge Union debate and his own book launch events in the UK to protest the latest sanctions, the UK announced it was willing to engage with the Indian government with this matter. Tharoor tweeted: “It is disgraceful to ask fully vaccinated Indians to quarantine.”