Barring entry to the EU for travellers given India-produced AstraZeneca will separate families and harm trade
If you are in the UK and have received the AstraZeneca jab, you may have been checking your batch number in the past few days to see if you were one of the 5 million Britons who received a version of the vaccine manufactured in India. That vaccine has not been approved by the European Commission for its new digital Covid certificate, which went live last week.
The certificate allows a vaccinated person to travel, without the need for quarantine or further testing, between the EU’s 27 countries (and four associated European nations). Hence headlines over the weekend about “travel bans” and Europe being “off limits” to some British travellers. However, the odds are that UK citizens will probably be fine and their travel to Europe will proceed unhindered: the prime minister himself said he was “confident” that there “will not be a problem” for travellers. It was just “an administrative hurdle” that should be “straightened out”, a member of the UK’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation told the BBC.
