UK approves Covishield: India no longer in the ‘red list’.

United Kingdom has issued its new travel advisory regarding COVID-19 regulations on Wednesday. In the revised regulations, the Covishiled vaccine produced by the Serum Institute of India has been listed with other approved vaccines against COVID-19.  India had been under the red list of countries according to the previous Covid-19 travel rules.

Britain had raised concerns about the Indian Covid vaccination certification process and had previously refused to recognise those who took both doses of WHO-approved Covishield, as vaccinated. India and UK had been working to resolve the issue which caused distress among the international travellers and officials in India. India, as a response to the ‘discriminatory’ action from United Kingdom, had warned of taking similar measures.

The UK government website mentioned Covishield under the list of accepted vaccines on Wednesday. A British High Commission spokesperson said in Delhi that they were engaging with the Indian government to see how they could expand the vaccine certification recognition to those who are vaccinated by an approved public health body in India.

Although, India is removed from the red list, Indian travellers are required to follow the quarantine rules in UK on their arrival. The travellers must have completed the full course of vaccine at least 14 days prior to their arrival in England.

The government update said that those vaccinated under approved vaccination programmes in UK, US, Europe or any UK vaccine programmes overseas, with full doses of AstraZeneca, Pfizer BioNTech, Moderna or Janssen vaccine, would qualify as fully vaccinated from October 4th.

People who are vaccinated from relevant 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 are also recognised as fully vaccinated. Four listed vaccines such as AstraZeneca Covishield, AstraZeneca Vaxzevria and Moderna Takeda qualify as approved COVID-19 vaccines.