RABAT: Europe is gradually re-opening to vaccinated travellers as coronavirus restrictions ease, but in some African nations, such as Morocco, recipients of jabs not recognised by the EU are facing disappointment.
“It seems very much as if a vaccine has become a visa,” said Moroccan columnist Karim Boukhari.
“I have my visa, but my vaccine is Chinese. It’s as if I don’t have a visa.”
The EU currently recommends that member states only allow people from a small number of non-EU countries to visit on non-essential trips.
The only African country on that list is Rwanda.
To visit France for example, would-be travellers from Morocco must first prove they need to reach the EU for essential reasons, such as visiting a sick relative.
“Visa-holders are not automatically authorised to travel to France and must respect the entry rules … as regards vaccinations,” warned the French embassy in Morocco in a tweet this week.
Travellers to Europe must prove that they are fully inoculated with one of the four anti-COVID-19 jabs so far approved by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) – the AstraZeneca, Johnson&Johnson, Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna vaccines.
But the Chinese vaccines Sinovac and Sinopharm have been the most widely used on the African continent so far.
And while Morocco says it has fully vaccinated some seven million people, most of those have received the Sinopharm jab.
That means that for the purposes of travel to France, they are considered unvaccinated. Reuters
