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Saturday, March 15, 2025

No Canada entry exemption for those vaccinated with Sinopharm

by

1359 days ago
20210625
 Packaging for the Sinopharm COVID 19 vaccines administered at the Couva health Centre, Couva.

Packaging for the Sinopharm COVID 19 vaccines administered at the Couva health Centre, Couva.

KRISTIAN DE SILVA

No Cana­da Quar­an­tine Ex­emp­tion for Sinopharm Vac­ci­nat­ed

Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

Peo­ple in­oc­u­lat­ed with the Sinopharm vac­cine will not be al­lowed to en­ter Cana­da us­ing the soon-to-be-im­ple­ment­ed loos­ened COVID-19 pro­to­cols for those who are ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed. They will be al­lowed en­try but will still be sub­ject to quar­an­tine.

Cana­di­an au­thor­i­ties have in­di­cat­ed that those ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed with recog­nised dos­es will not be sub­ject to quar­an­tine or PCR test­ing on the eighth day af­ter ar­rival.

Ac­cord­ing to the Cana­di­an Pub­lic Health Agency, the ap­proved vac­cines are Pfiz­er, Mod­er­na, Ox­ford-As­traZeneca and John­son & John­son’s Janssen.

How­ev­er, the list of vac­cines not ap­proved un­der the ful­ly-vac­ci­nat­ed pol­i­cy are Bharat Biotech (Co­v­ax­in, BBV152 A, B, C), Cansi­no (Con­vide­cia, Ad5-nCoV), Gamalaya (Sput­nik V, Gam-COVID-Vac), Sinopharm (BBIBP-CorV), Sinopharm-Wuhan, Sino­vac (Coro­n­aVac, Pi­Co­V­acc), Vec­tor In­sti­tute (Epi­Vac­Coro­na) and any oth­er.

Since March 21, 2020, on­ly cer­tain cat­e­gories of trav­ellers have been al­lowed to en­ter the coun­try. This in­cludes some tem­po­rary for­eign work­ers, some in­ter­na­tion­al stu­dents, some ap­proved per­ma­nent res­i­dents, com­pas­sion­ate rea­sons such as for fu­ner­als, or some­one with a valid med­ical rea­son for need­ing sup­port, im­me­di­ate or ex­tend­ed fam­i­ly mem­bers of Cana­di­an cit­i­zens, per­sons reg­is­tered un­der the In­di­an Act, or per­ma­nent res­i­dents of Cana­da among oth­ers.

The new pol­i­cy takes ef­fect from Ju­ly 6.

Min­is­ter of For­eign and CARI­COM Af­fairs Dr Amery Browne told Guardian Me­dia that such a de­ci­sion was well with­in the right of any sov­er­eign na­tion.

“All coun­tries have the sov­er­eign right and re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to de­ter­mine how they man­age vis­i­tors dur­ing the pan­dem­ic. Such pro­to­cols are sub­ject to up­date and re­view over time and in­deed, the Cana­di­an au­thor­i­ties have in­di­cat­ed that their list of ex­empt­ed vac­cines may ex­pand over time. In the in­ter­im, a lim­it­ed quar­an­tine pe­ri­od with test­ing would con­tin­ue to ap­ply for some prospec­tive trav­ellers,” he said.

How­ev­er, in­ter­nal med­i­cine spe­cial­ist and con­sul­tant Dr Joel Teelucks­ingh said this should not dis­suade peo­ple from tak­ing the vac­cine.

“The main goal at this point is safe­ty and with closed bor­ders and with the even­tu­al ar­rival of vari­ants, vac­ci­na­tion is a pri­or­i­ty. Re­duc­ing the risk of hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tions and death should be para­mount rather than trav­el at this point,” he said.

He al­so added that while Cana­da may not have the jab on its list of ap­proved vac­cines, it is not an in­dict­ment on its ef­fec­tive­ness.

“The thing that we should re­mem­ber is that this is a World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion-ap­proved vac­cine,” he said.

Mean­while, T&T is one of the Caribbean na­tions left out of Eng­land’s up­dat­ed trav­el green list. Ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed British na­tion­als head­ing to coun­tries on the list will not be re­quired to quar­an­tine up­on re­turn­ing home.

The Caribbean coun­tries added to the list are An­guil­la, An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, Bar­ba­dos, British Vir­gin Is­lands, Cay­man Is­lands, Do­mini­ca, Grena­da, Montser­rat and the Turks and Caicos Is­lands.


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