International travel update, 9 November 2021
From 4am Monday 22 November, COVID-19 vaccines on the WHO EUL will be recognised and all under-18s coming to England will be treated as fully vaccinated at the border.
This statement provides an update on developments on international travel.
From 4am on Monday 22 November, the government will recognise vaccines on the World Health Organization’s Emergency Use Listing (WHO EUL) at our border.
In practice, this means that Sinovac, Sinopharm Beijing and Covaxin will be added to our list of approved vaccines for inbound travel, benefitting more fully vaccinated people from countries around the world.
The WHO EUL process includes a review of quality, safety and efficacy data performed by WHO experts, and many countries including the United States, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and Iceland are already recognising the WHO EUL vaccines. These vaccines are in addition to the existing vaccines we recognise at the border, namely Oxford/AstraZeneca, Moderna, Pfizer BioNTech and Janssen (Johnson and Johnson).
As such, from 4am on 22 November, travellers who have proof of vaccination with a full course of these approved vaccines will be treated the same as those fully vaccinated in the UK, and so will not have to self-isolate on arrival or take a pre-departure test, and only need to take a lateral flow device (LFD) test post-arrival (with confirmatory PCR if positive). This will benefit passengers with proof of vaccination from the over 135 countries and territories in scope of the policy.
Further, all under-18s coming to England from non-red list countries 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.
Whilst public health is a devolved matter, the government works closely with the devolved administrations on any changes to international travel and aims to ensure a whole UK approach.
The government continues to keep our measures under review and will not hesitate to act if we perceive a risk to public health.