Vaccine taken outside of Europe

[znaika]

Does anyone have any personal experience of someone arriving from outside the EU who has been double vaccinated?

The rules seem unclear. On one part of the official website it says that the only vaccines in the UK count but in another it says approved e.g. AZ double vaccinated is fine.
It is so hard to understand. Does this mean only people who live in the EU or US are counted as vaccinated and screw the rest of the world?

Should be clearer. Arriving in England from outside EU.

www.gov.uk/guidance/how-to-quarantine-when-you-arrive-in-england

The list of countries is in the attached. So anyone vaccinated in the EU or Andorra, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Monaco, Norway, San Marino, Switzerland and the Vatican City, and is vaccinated with an EMA or Swismedic approved vaccine has the same status as people vaccinated with the vaccines licensed in the UK.

This also applies to people vaccinated in the US with a FDA licensed vaccine.

People from other countries can enter but they have to follow the quarantine rules for the country’s RAG status.

I’m not sure what you mean by On one part of the official website it says that the only vaccines in the UK count but in another it says approved e.g. AZ double vaccinated is fine.

I meant only EU vaccines are allowed. It seems so. Only eu or us vaccunes alllowed. Scroll down the site says approved vaccines and it reads like if it os an Az of pfizer vaccine it's ok.

The website is shite in design and v hard if you are not a native speaker. What a load of shit

What do you mean by EU vaccines?
The UK isn't in the EU.

Pp's post makes it very clear.

I don't know if it helps, but I am Serbian and the Digital Green Certificate issued by Serbia is EU-harmonised, although individual EU countries can choose not to accept it. The UK, which of course is not in the EU, does not accept it even though it follows same standards as an EU green certificate, which they do accept. There are also some people who were vaxxed in EU countries - like people who received Sinopharm in Hungary - who are not covered. So I'd assume the UK will not accept your country's certificate if it is not on the UK's official list of countries whose vaccine programmes are approved.

The UK cannot accept the vaccine certificates, rather than the vaccines. Most countries have managed to accept the nhs one, but the uk is ridiculous about travel. So depending on the country, your friend is treated as unvaccinated unfortunately as the proof isn’t valid. So follow the advice for unvaccinated.

@Palilula - what would happen if a Serbian-vaccinated person downloaded tje French or danish or swedish app and an scanned in their Serbian barcode? Would that then be accepted?

I downloaded a few different countries apps and scanned my barcode and am now on possession of a French, German, Austrian and Swedish EU green pass (I just wanted to see what data came up!)

@PersephoneJames, I think technically the UK would/could still refuse that, because the location of the vaccination would be outside the EU. Do your passes show the location where you actually received the vaccination? I have the Austrian Green Pass, and it does show the location for me, not sure if they all do. Whether UKVI would check is of course a variable, but I'd be prepared for them not to accept it and to treat someone entering with an EU green pass but vax location outside UK/US/EU as non-vaccinated.

They do all show the member state I got mine in yes, not the specific location. I wonder how closely the border force check. Does your Austrian one show both doses? All mine only show my second dose, which I thought interesting because the UK only accepts two of the same dose. Mine says pfizer 2/2 (but no detail of 1/2)

Mine shows the location of the second doze only. Interesting, I never thought about that - so they do rely on the authority that issues the pass to make certain decisions about whether it's valid that may not match the requirements the UK wants to enforce!

I wonder if they may ask for more detail at immigration, including proof of both shots, if something seems unclear. (I don't have specific experience of that because I was in Austria for 10+ days before going to the UK, so treated as green, while I think the question only comes up if you're coming from or have been in an amber country.)

@znaika

I meant only EU vaccines are allowed. It seems so. Only eu or us vaccunes alllowed. Scroll down the site says approved vaccines and it reads like if it os an Az of pfizer vaccine it's ok.

The website is shite in design and v hard if you are not a native speaker. What a load of shit

Most of the gov.uk website is terribly badly written and confusing to anyone of sound mind.

Moderna, Pfizer, AZ and Janssen are licensed by the EMA. Moderna, Pfizer and Janssen are licensed by the FDA.

It seams reasonable that the UK will only accept the above, as these are the only vaccines licensed in the UK.

However, it makes no sense to me that the UK doesn’t accept the above vaccines from, say, Canada and Israel, whose medicines regulation system is equivalent to that in the EU. I hope this isn’t more post-Brexit posturing by our “leaders”.

It is batshit but is probably partly a reciprocal thing eg the perhaps the UK won’t recognise anyone vaccinated in Canada but Canada won’t accept anyone vaccinated in the UK either?
So pairs of countries have to come to an agreement.
Also it won’t just be about the actual vaccine but about being sure that the system you have to prove what you have is robust. For example if a certain country gave our cards rather than barcodes and they were easily forged, the government perhaps wouldn’t be keen to give people arriving from that country a free pass

So while there are good reasons to be cautious there absolutely needs to be a more joined up approach globally to all this

Thank you so much for your help. Yes we are n a situation like Serbia. No barcode. 2 AZ vaccines and the serial numbers of the vaccines but is not enough 😭
It is so annoying. They have passed covid and have blood test and 2 vaccines, mask wearer negative pcr, amber country.
Will need to quarantine and 3 pcr tests. It's bullshit. So infuriating

@Palilula

I wonder if they may ask for more detail at immigration, including proof of both shots, if something seems unclear. (I don't have specific experience of that because I was in Austria for 10+ days before going to the UK, so treated as green, while I think the question only comes up if you're coming from or have been in an amber country.)

I don’t have proof of both shots, so I hope not. I’m British and flying to visit family next week, I have a green pass which only details my second shot (that’s how most of the eu ones work including where I live as they don’t generate the certificate until 14 days after shot 2 as only then are you fully vaxxed. As someone terrified of flying I could do without this extra aggro!

Persephone, sorry, I hope I didn't make you more anxious! If you have the EU green cert with an EU country as the final vax location I think you're fine. I was thinking of a situation where someone has gone through the whole vaccination sequence in another country (outside EU/UK/US) like Znaika.

Znaika, I agree with you - it doesn't make a lot of sense but right now the UK and other countries are being cautious. Even inside the EU, different countries make their own rules and it's hard to follow the logic.

Persephone, I know several people (UK citizens living abroad) who have entered the UK to visit family in recent weeks on the strength of EU digital passes, which as you say only mention the name of the second vaccine (plus the phrase 2nd of 2 vaccines), and there has been no problem at immigration, certainly no insistence on quarantine. I'm quite relieved about that because I have two different vaccines (AZ plus Pfizer), and the AZ is simply not mentioned anywhere on the EU pass, which is good given that theUK bizarrely doesn't recognise that combo. The UK even recognises the German certificate although it's only available in German and not English (at least it wasn't, must check if an English version is now available).