Robust diplomacy to stare down UK over vax apartheid

The tit-for-tat mandatory quarantine imposed on Britons beginning Monday mirrors the UK's regulations to manage arrivals from various countries, including India, from the same day. It includes a pre-boarding RT-PCR test, a COVID test upon landing at the airport and a 10-day mandatory home quarantine with another corona test thrown in on the eighth day. In other words, fully inoculated visitors will be treated as unvaccinated. That nations must take all possible steps to prevent another full-blown lockdown is a given. The number of COVID-positive cases at present in the UK is higher than that in India. But resistance within Britain to some kind of vaccine passport at places of public gathering is so high that it was forced to put it off for now. Yet, it has no qualms in making life difficult for even double-jabbed visitors from select nations like India.

Discrimination is written all over the UK regulation, especially with regard to India, as both use the same vaccine candidate. It was developed by Oxford University along with AstraZeneca and licenced to the Serum Institute of India for mass production. Around 90 per cent of all jabs in India are from Serum's Covishield. While the UK began by pointing at problems with Covishield, it changed the goalpost to issues with vaccination certificates, only to do another somersault saying the certification was technically fine. Which meant it had no leg to stand on, yet the proposed quarantine was not nixed. If apartheid had a Covid face, this was it. UNGA head Abdulla Shahid took Covishield; would he also be subjected to quarantine in the UK?

Multiple factors were at play as Delhi decided to stare down the former world power. For example, Britain has been considerably weakened after its divorce from the EU. And India has a reputation to protect because it is seen as the pharmacy of the world. The UK playing police in India's backyard, joining the US and Australia to create an Indo-Pacific security mechanism against China, would have been another pain point. For, it downgraded the Quad of which India, the US, Japan and Australia are members. One hopes muscular diplomacy is pursued till the end, sending an unequivocal message that messing around with India will have consequences.