London, 22 September: After all, the UK has approved the Covishield vaccine against Covid-19 under pressure from India.
In its new travel advisory, it has also been said that Indians coming to the UK with Covishield’s corona vaccine will still have to stay in quarantine for 14 days.
The latest UK travel advisory is to come into effect from October 4. It was released a few days ago but it did not recognize Covishield, which caused controversy. Now the name of Covishield has been added in the new advisory. The advisory states that Oxford/AstraZeneca, Pfizer BioNTech, Moderna and Janssen vaccines have been approved.
This vaccine must be from a public health body in Australia, Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Bahrain, Brunei, Canada, Dominica, Israel, Japan, Kuwait, Malaysia, New Zealand, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea or Taiwan.
Apart from this, Indian vaccines Covishield, AstraZeneca Covishield, Astragenica Vaxjeveria, Moderna Takeda have also been approved.
The advisory states that a recognized vaccine must have had both doses 14 days before arrival in England. Covishield is the only India-made vaccine that is on the list of approved vaccines so far. From November, only fully vaccinated people from Europe’s 26 Schengen countries, including Germany, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, France and India, as well as Britain, Ireland, Greece, China, South Africa, Iran and Brazil, will be allowed air travel.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has approved only seven vaccines for use so far. These include Moderna, Pfizer-BioNtech, Johnson & Johnson, Oxford-AstraZeneca, Covishield and China’s Sinofarm and Sinovac. Indigenous Covaxin developed by Bharat Biotech is yet to be approved. Bharat Biotech has applied to the WHO for approval of Covaxin, which is expected to be approved soon.
