Just a day after India sent a formal request to the members of the 27-nation grouping to individually consider allowing Indians who have taken Covishield and Covaxin vaccines and want to travel to Europe, Switzerland, and seven EU countries have added the Serum Institute-manufactured Oxford-Astrazeneca vaccine Covishield to its Green passport list on Thursday.
Austria, Germany, Slovenia, Greece, Iceland, Ireland and Spain are the seven EU member countries that accepted COVISHIELD vaccine on Thursday.
According to ANI, Estonia has also confirmed that it will recognize all the vaccines authorized by the Government of India for the travel of Indians to the country.
The Centre on Wednesday said that the failure to include Covishield and Covaxin will force India to implement mandatory quarantine rules for EU citizens.
Meanwhile, Indian drugmaker Zydus Cadila said on Thursday it has applied to the country’s drug regulator for emergency use approval of its Covid-19 vaccine and that it plans to manufacture up to 120 million doses of the shot annually.
What is the ‘Green Pass’?
The EU Digital Covid Certificate or ‘green pass’, which will be required for travel in the EU from 1 July, will allow those who have taken two doses of a vaccine on its list to travel to Europe and exempt them from mandatory quarantine.
The certificate includes information such as name, date of birth, date of issuance, the name of the vaccine or the details of the negative test result or recovery from Covid-19.
Which other vaccines feature in the ‘Green Pass’ list?
The EMA list includes four vaccines other than Covishield — Vaxzevria (Oxford-AstraZeneca), Comirnaty (Pfizer-BioNTech), Spikevax (Moderna) and Janssen (Johnson & Johnson).
