"Colonialist Mentality": Rising Backlash Over UK Vaccine Policy
NDTV
Coronavirus: Under UK's new travel rules, fully dosed arrivals from nations such as the US, Israel and Australia will be allowed to enter England without quarantine.
The UK government is facing a rising backlash over its refusal to recognize visitors as vaccinated unless they received their shots in a handful of select countries.
Under travel rules unveiled last week, fully dosed arrivals from nations such as the US, Israel and Australia will be allowed to enter England without quarantine starting Oct. 4. But vaccinated people from vast swathes of the world still face tougher restrictions, including a 10-day home isolation period.
The measure applies even if the visitor has had a vaccine approved and used in the U.K., such as the Pfizer Inc.-BioNTech SE version or the shot produced by AstraZeneca Plc and Oxford University. It doesn't matter whether the country is on the "red list" of those facing additional restrictions on entry or not.
"The stance by the U.K. smacks of a colonialist mentality which should be condemned in the strongest terms," said Shabir Madhi, a vaccinologist at Johannesburg's University of the Witwatersrand who led South Africa's trials of both the AstraZeneca and Novavax Inc. vaccines. "If they truly believe that these vaccines are sub-optimal -- which they are not -- they should provide the evidence to support this."
