New Delhi: On a day the UK added Covishield to its approved list of vaccines amid the row over India’s CoWin and vaccine certification process, Union Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar said that every country is taking decisions in the best interest of their nation. The statement is in contrast to the Modi government’s position, which expects a ‘reciprocal’ policy.
Chandrasekhar, who is the Minister of State (MoS) for Electronics and Information Technology, Skill Developments and Entrepreneurship, was addressing a BJP press conference on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the US when he was asked about the current vaccine row with the UK.
A controversy erupted last week when it came to light that the UK’s new Covid travel rules, set to kick in 4 October, didn’t recognise those traveling from India as being fully vaccinated. This applied even to those inoculated with Covishield, developed by AstraZeneca and UK’s Oxford University. India called the move “discriminatory”.
“I don’t want to get into too much detail… I will only leave this thought with you that during Covid, the height of fear and paranoia in countries about travel in general and travellers in particular, is high and expectedly so,” Chandrasekhar told media Wednesday.
The minister, however, clarified that he was not speaking on behalf of the health and external affairs ministries.
“Throughout the entire 18 months you have seen restrictions placed by many countries on people travelling in and out of the country and as countries get more confident… I am not speaking on behalf of the health minister or the external affairs minister. I am speaking as somebody who I think commonsensically can respond to this.
“I think these things have to evolve as the assessment of risk of the disease gets mitigated over time. Till such time every sovereign government, every sovereign country will take decisions which they believe are in the best interest of the people. And I put it down to that. I don’t think this is anything more than that and I leave it to that,” he said.
Although Covishield has been approved in the UK, Indian travellers will still have to quarantine themselves on arrival for 10 days as UK authorities and India are yet to resolve the issue of India’s Covid vaccine certificates.
ThePrint had reported that health ministry officials maintain that no concerns have been raised officially about CoWin.
(Edited by Manasa Mohan)
Also read: Govt defends CoWin certificate as UK nod for Covishield fails to resolve travel row