India to slap travel curbs on vaccinated UK travellers in tit-for-tat move
- British arrivals will have to undergo mandatory quarantine at home or at their destination address for 10 days even if they are fully vaccinated
- It follows Britain’s move not to recognise Indian-made AstraZeneca shots, despite the doses being identical to those given to millions of Britons
India on Friday said British nationals arriving in the country would be subjected to Covid-19 curbs, in response to the same measures imposed on Indians visiting the UK.
New Delhi has been demanding that Britain revoke what it called a “discriminatory” advisory that includes Indians even if they are fully vaccinated with the Indian-made AstraZeneca shots.
India’s External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar had discussed the issue with British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss in a meeting in New York earlier this week.
A foreign ministry official said that starting on Monday, all British arrivals, including those who have been inoculated, will have to take a Covid-19 test within 72 hours before travel, another test on arrival in India and the third one eight days later.
They will also have to quarantine at home or at their destination address for 10 days, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity as he was not authorised to talk to reporters.
The trouble started when Britain’s government announced what it billed as a simplification of its travel rules including allowing fully vaccinated travellers arriving in England from much of the world to skip quarantine and take fewer tests.
But the fine print on who was considered fully vaccinated proved complicated. To skip self-isolation, travellers must have received a vaccine under the American, British or European programmes or have received a UK-authorised shot from an approved health body.
Bodies in more than a dozen countries in Asia, the Caribbean and the Middle East made it to the list, However, India’s programme was not included, nor were any programmes in Africa.
Countries that received hundreds of thousands of doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine from the UK itself were left wondering why their vaccination programmes were not good enough in the eyes of the British government.
That is leading to concerns that the rules could exacerbate already worrying vaccine hesitancy in Africa as some question whether the doses available there do not measure up.
The vast majority of Indians have been vaccinated with the Indian-made AstraZeneca shots.
The Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine has been produced by Serum Institute of India. Others have received Covaxin, a vaccine produced by an Indian company that is not used in Britain.
