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.