‘10-day quarantine for UK travellers to India’

NEW DELHI: India on Friday imposed reciprocal travel restrictions on UK nationals arriving in India, days after a row over UK government’s rules upset the Indian side.

All UK nationals arriving in India from the UK, irrespective of their vaccination status, will have to undergo an RT-PCR test 72 hours before travel and a mandatory home-quarantine for 10 days after arrival, people familiar with the developments said.

The new regulations will come into effect from October 4, the people cited above said.

Authorities in the ministry of health and family welfare, and the ministry of civil aviation, the people said. The change in the rules has come after the UK government announced that even travellers vaccinated with the Indian version of the AstraZeneca vaccine, Covishield, will be considered unvaccinated.

The British rules, unveiled on September 17, were to become effective from October 4, and were described by the UK as an attempt 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-BioNTech 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.

This, effectively, meant even Indians who have received both doses of Covishield, the local version of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine and one of the two main vaccines being used for the domestic immunisation programme, will be considered unvaccinated.

The Indian side registered strong displeasure at the restrictions, calling them “discriminatory” and warned of reciprocal measures.