NEW DELHI - Britain has included the Covishield vaccine, the Indian version of AstraZeneca, in the list of approved vaccines against Covid 19. The decision was announced earlier, after the storm of criticism raised yesterday in India for the exclusion of the product.
In the new travel guidelines issued today, the UK says that "Covishield, the vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University and manufactured by the Serum Institute of India (SII) will be considered among those approved, on a par with Oxford- AstraZeneca, Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, and Janssen, for all travelers who will enter from all over the world, starting October 4th ".
But the Indian victory after the Delhi protests against "discriminatory politics" and the threats of "countermeasures" is only partial.
In fact, England says that travelers will be considered vaccinated only if in possession of the certificate from a recognized health institution (a sort of green pass) and that Indians will still have to undergo a ten-day quarantine for lack of " Covishield certification ".
In essence, these provisions suggest that London has no problems with the vaccine formulation but with the certification issued by India.
An employee of the British Embassy in Delhi made it known that "the government is working with the Indian government to resolve this problem quickly".
