From 4am Monday 22 November, COVID-19 vaccines on the WHO EUL will be recognised and all under-18s coming to England will be treated as fully vaccinated at the border.
“From 4 am on Monday 22 November, the government will recognise vaccines on the World Health Organization’s Emergency Use Listing (WHO EUL) at our border”, said the statement issued by the UK Departments of Transport and The Rt Hon Grant Shapps MP.
In practice, this means that Sinovac, Sinopharm Beijing and Covaxin will be added to the UK list of approved vaccines for inbound travel, benefitting more fully vaccinated people from countries around the world.
The WHO EUL process includes a review of the quality, safety and efficacy data performed by WHO experts and many countries including the United States, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and Iceland are already recognising the WHO EUL vaccines. These vaccines are in addition to the existing vaccines we recognise at the border, namely Oxford/AstraZeneca, Moderna, Pfizer BioNTech and Janssen (Johnson and Johnson).
As such, from 4 am on 22 November, travellers who have proof of vaccination with a full course of these approved vaccines will be treated the same as those fully vaccinated in the UK, and so will not have to self-isolate on arrival or take a pre-departure test, and only need to take a lateral flow device (LFD) test post-arrival (with confirmatory PCR if positive). This will benefit passengers with proof of vaccination from the over 135 countries and territories in the scope of the policy.
Further, all under-18s coming to England from non-red list countries will be treated as fully vaccinated at the border and will be exempt from self-isolation requirements on arrival, day 8 testing and pre-departure testing.
