Starting today (Monday ,22 November) the Sinopharm vaccine which is being administered in Namibia, is now recognized for United Kingdom (UK) inbound travel.
This comes as the country’s government early this month announced that it will recognise vaccines on the World Health Organization’s Emergency Use Listing (WHO EUL), as a result, Sinovac, Sinopharm Beijing and Covaxin have been added to the list of approved vaccines for the UK.
The UK government will also simplify travel rules for all under-18s coming to England who 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.
In October the UK government removed Namibia from its ‘red list’, allowing unrestricted travel between the two countries.
Red-list countries are those the UK government says should not be visited “except in the most extreme of circumstances”.
Under the UK’s previous travel rules, travelers who have been to a country or territory on the ‘red list’ in the last 10 days, were only allowed to enter the UK if they are British or Irish nationals or have residence rights in the UK.
These travelers were subject to rigorous COVID testing and had to quarantine at a designated hotel at their own cost.