Opinion: current COVID regulations discriminate against internationals

Put yourself in the shoes of an international fresher. After months of hoping you’ll meet your offer conditions, your college confirms your offer. You, the proud owner of a seat at the University of Cambridge, fly across the world to the UK.

Leaving your home behind is never easy and the fact that you may have to quarantine if you’re from a country whose vaccination programme isn’t approved doesn’t help. This is all at an exorbitant expense to yourself (although change appears to be on the way).

When your quarantine finally ends, you’re free! You traipse around King’s Parade, discover your first set of Dinky Doors, attend in-person lectures if you’re lucky– everything’s going well for you as you settle into “life” as a Cambridge student.

Image credits: Alan Murray-Rust via the Creative Commons Licence

Then, a couple weeks later, you receive a worrying email out of the blue. You’ve been in close contact with someone who tested positive for COVID-19.

You follow protocol and self-isolate until you receive the results of your PCR test, which (luckily for you) is negative. You email your college the negative result, eager to return to normal life. But you cannot.

Because your vaccination wasn’t administered in the UK, you need to self-isolate for 10 days from your date of contact with the person who tested positive. You could be justified in thinking that the second half of that sentence is a valid policy response. After all, COVID-19 cases are currently trending upwards in the UK, and the last thing anyone wants is another nationwide lockdown.

“It’s the same vaccine, just administered in a different place.”

However, the current policy as a whole is unfair to international students. Anirudh Bhalekar (a student from India) says, “I think [the policy]’s fairly strange because it’s the same vaccine, just administered in a different place.”

A student jabbed twice with the AstraZeneca vaccine in the UK wouldn’t have to self-isolate for 10 days after coming in contact with a positive COVID-19 patient (provided it had been 14 days since their second dose). A student jabbed twice with the AstraZeneca vaccine anywhere else in the world would.

What makes things even more confusing is the inconsistency between travel regulations and domestic regulations. The second student qualifies as fully vaccinated under current rules for travel to England– because the government treats the AstraZeneca formulations Vaxzevria and Covishield as equal to UK-administered AstraZeneca.

Why does this not extend to self-isolation rules?

Who this affects

Unfortunately, the policy affects everyone who was not vaccinated within the UK’s domestic borders, not just international students. As of the time of writing, you are only legally exempt from self-isolation for 10 days after close contact if any one of the following conditions apply to you:

1. You are fully vaccinated (you received a full course of your MHRA-approved vaccinations within the UK)
2. You are below the age of 18 years and 6 months
3. You participated in or are part of an approved COVID-19 vaccine trial
4. You are unable to get vaccinated for medical reasons

If you weren’t vaccinated in the UK, you’ll most likely have to self-isolate for 10 days if you’re flagged as a close contact of someone who tested positive.

“Either all of us should have to self-isolate or none of us should.”

Muhamad Irfan bin Muhamad Syahril, a fresher from Malaysia, calls for a policy that treats recipients of vaccines outside the UK the same as the recipients of vaccines within the UK: “Either all of us should have to self-isolate or none of us should.”

We don’t yet know if Lent 2022 is going to be a complete return to in-person teaching, but it seems exceptionally unlikely that the coronavirus will be a non-issue by then. With a return to fully in-person classes, more and more people will be identified as close contacts. The result of that will be lectures populated wholly by UK-vaccinated students as internationals are forced to self-isolate.

To me, that sounds just a little bit unfair. I want to establish that I do believe that the coronavirus is still enough of an issue that contact tracing and self-isolation based on vaccination status are necessary policy measures. But the unequal treatment of internationals who have received an MHRA-approved vaccine outside the UK just doesn’t sit right with me.

“The policy makes it harder for the university too”

Jacob Merkord, a student from the US, said that, “I think it’s ridiculous. I think that the policy makes it harder for the university too, as they have in-person classes whose members are forced to self-isolate despite being fully vaccinated.”

It is imperative that the policy is amended to treat those fully vaccinated with an approved vaccine outside the UK equally to those fully vaccinated within the UK. When contacted, the University’s COVID Helpdesk said Cambridge and other higher education providers are pushing for legislative change in both houses of Parliament.

If you’ve received the same vaccine, you deserve the same treatment. Of course, this is all a moot point if you haven’t yet been vaccinated for COVID-19, which the NHS recommends doing at the earliest (unless exempt).

Feature image credits: Bilyana Tomova

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