E-Paper
UK recognises Covishield, but still no green light for Indians
On Tuesday, India had urged the UK to change its policy requiring visiting Indian nationals to quarantine even if they are fully vaccinated, describing it as discriminatory.
The UK government on Wednesday added Covishield as one of the vaccines it will recognise when allowing international travellers to skip quarantine on arrival, but has not yet included India in the list of countries from where people will be eligible for this new rule.
The move comes a day after India warned of reciprocal measures as the controversy around UK’s new travel rules, which come into force on October 4, sparked allegations of racism.
UK high commissioner Alex Ellis attributed the issue to a significant shift in his country’s travel policy that was announced only on September 17 and made it clear Covishield is “not a problem”. He declined to set a deadline for resolving the matter and said things are moving “at a rapid pace” on recognising India’s vaccine certification.
National Health Authority chairman RS Sharma, who supervises functioning of the CoWIN platform, said officials from both sides had two meetings this month to discuss the technical aspects of each other’s certification systems, and the discussions were now closed.
“In the first [meeting], the British high commissioner met me on September 2, and the second one was yesterday (September 21) between the technical teams. We made them understand how our system worked and they explained the functioning of their system to us. Both these meetings were quite fruitful,” said Sharma.
People familiar with developments, who asked not to be named, said the discussions focused on certification done through the CoWIN app, the security of the system, data sharing between the two sides, and reconciling the CoWIN system with the NHS Covid Pass developed by Britain’s National Health Service (NHS).
There were also some concerns about the security of the certification system, the people said without going into details.
Ellis confirmed the NHS was in talks with officials managing CoWIN. The UK has to have confidence in the Indian app as the movement of people from both countries could affect public health, he said.
“We have been having detailed technical discussions regarding certification, with the builders of the CoWIN app and the NHS app, about both apps. They’re happening at a rapid pace, to ensure that both countries mutually recognise the vaccine certificates issued by each other,” Ellis said in a statement.
“We’re clear Covishield is not a problem. The UK is open to travel and we’re already seeing a lot of people going from India to the UK, be it tourists, businesspeople or students. Over 62,500 student visas have been issued in the year ending June 2021, which is an increase of almost 30% as compared to the previous year. We want to make the process of travelling as easy as possible,” he added.
According to Sharma, a communiqué from the UK on Wednesday said there was no need for further discussions on the issue. “They said there was no need for a third discussion as they were good. Now a decision will be taken at the diplomatic and policy level. No concern has been raised to us regarding certification issues. A decision is yet to be taken on this,” he said.
“Therefore, the reports doing rounds on our certification having been found faulty are all fake. Our system is a very safe system and the vaccination certificates that we issue are very much digitally verifiable,” he added.
On Tuesday, India had urged the UK to change its policy requiring visiting Indian nationals to quarantine even if they are fully vaccinated, describing it as discriminatory, and foreign secretary Harsh Shringla warned New Delhi could impose “reciprocal measures” against countries that don’t accept Indian vaccine certification.
The issue was also raised by external affairs minister S Jaishankar at a meeting with his British counterpart Liz Truss on the margins of the UN General Assembly in New York on Monday.
The new UK rules introduced last week were described by Britain as an effort to change the current “red, amber, green traffic light system” to a single red list of countries and “simplified travel measures” for arrivals from around the world.
Under the rules, only people who have got both shots of a double-dose vaccine such as Oxford-AstraZeneca, Pfizer or Moderna, or the single-shot Janssen vaccine “under an approved vaccination program in the UK, Europe, US”, or UK vaccine programme overseas will be considered fully vaccinated.
Additionally, people who have received these jabs in Australia, Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Bahrain, Brunei, Canada, Dominica, Israel, Japan, Kuwait, Malaysia, New Zealand, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea or Taiwan will also be considered fully vaccinated.
Early on Wednesday, the UK updated the guidance to include formulations of the four vaccines, including Covishield, in the list of approved doses.
A large part of the issue for India, until Wednesday’s update, was that the UK did not recognise Covishield, the brand name for the version of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine made by Serum Institute of India (SII). Earlier, UK authorities only recognised AstraZeneca’s version of the vaccine, which is sold as Vaxzevria.
Recognising one but not the other had led to allegations of racism since the bio-equivalence between both doses has now been established in scientific studies.
Covishield has been recognised by the World Health Organization as well but not by several other prominent regulators, such as European Union’s European Medicines Agency (EMA), which too has recognised Vaxzevria.
To remedy this, AstraZeneca has applied to EMA for SII to be recognised as an alternative manufacturer. “The company is tracking acceptances and currently there are 23 European countries accepting Covishield without restrictive measures such as quarantine,” said a person familiar with the developments, on condition of anonymity.
The 23 European countries with no restrictions are Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Latvia, Liechtenstein, The Netherlands, Norway, Romania, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.
