New Delhi: Congress MP Shashi Tharoor on Monday criticised United Kingdom over the Covid-19 new guidelines. According to the policy, fully vaccinated Indians who received Covishield the Serum Institute of India produced Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine would still be required to undergo a pre-departure PCR test and further tests on landing in the UK and will have to follow home quarantine rules.
He said that he pulled out of a debate at Cambridge Union because of this policy, “Because of this I have pulled out of a debate at the @cambridgeunion & out of launch events for the UK edition of my book #TheBattleOfBelonging (published there as #TheStruggleForIndiasSoul). It is offensive to ask fully vaccinated Indians to quarantine. The Brits are reviewing!” he tweeted.
UK government has confirmed that if a person has been vaccinated in Africa, South America, UAE, India, Turkey and a few other nations, they will be considered “unvaccinated” and will have to follow the rules and stay in 10-day home quarantine.
From October 4, the current traffic light system of red, amber and green countries based on levels of Covid-19 risk will be scrapped and replaced with one red list only. India was so far in the amber list. Many feel that the policy is unfair.
However, travellers from 17 additional countries with eligible vaccines, including Japan, Singapore and Malaysia, will no longer need to take pre-departure PCR tests for travelling into England.
In the latest update, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka are among eight red list destinations moved off the travel ban list from next Wednesday. Turkey, the Maldives, Egypt, Oman, and Kenya are the others to be off the red list.
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