Discrimination at its worst

Britons of Pakistani origin as well as Pakistanis with links to the UK are sorely disappointed by the UK government’s decision to keep Pakistan on the Red list for Covid travel restrictions while moving India from Red to Amber. Many say that the removal of India from the Red list, alongside no change in status for countries like Turkey and Pakistan, reeks of bad faith and discrimination. Pakistan and Bangladesh have been on the Red list since April 9.

At the time, Bangladesh had the South Africa variant but not the Brazil one. Pakistan had neither. India had both. India also had what came to be known as the Delta (Indian) variant. But India was not added to the Red list till April 23. The UK government says that it refers to four factors when listing countries in the three categories — red, amber, green — of quarantine and travel restrictions: the percentage of a country’s population that has been vaccinated, the rate of infection, the prevalence of variants of concern, and the country’s access to reliable scientific data and genomic sequencing. But facts speak for themselves.

Let us start with the Financial Times Covid vaccine tracker which compiles data from the Our World in Data project at the University of Oxford, the World Health Organization, and national data sources from some countries. The data on August 5 showed that in Turkey, 33.4% of the population had been fully vaccinated. By comparison, in India, just 7.9% has been fully vaccinated. Granted Pakistan is behind in vaccination rates. However, 12.5% of the population has now been given at least one dose and Pakistan is vaccinating a million people a day.

Another source of information is the Reuters Covid-19 tracker which compiles data from local state agencies, local media, the Oxford Coronavirus Government Response Tracker, Our World in Data, The World Bank and Reuters’ own research. According to the Reuters tracker, India’s seven-day infection rate is 20 per 100,000 people, while Pakistan’s is 14 per 100,000 people. To add to this, as reported by the BBC on May 11, the Wall Street Journal on June 27, and many other publications, health experts and statisticians say India has vastly undercounted its Covid cases and deaths.

“India’s undercount has also left a huge gap in the world’s understanding of the impact of the Delta variant, which health experts believe helped drive one of the world’s worst Covid-19 surges in April and May.” Let us examine some more facts. Nigeria has administered 3.4 million doses and 1.4 million people are fully vaccinated which is 0.7% of the total population. In comparison, Pakistan has administered 32.4 million doses and about 5 million people are fully vaccinated which is about 2.1% of the total population. And yet Nigeria is on the Amber list and Pakistan on the Red. Several MPs have come out strongly against their government’s “ridiculous” move.

Yasmin Qureshi, a Labour MP and Shadow Minister for International Development, tweeted, “The Government is seeking to penalise Pakistan in favour of potential economic benefit. This is clear and blatant discrimination towards Pakistan.” UK Labour MP Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi also shared his appeal to the government, saying government decisions must be rooted in science, not politics. To add insult to injury, the hotel quarantine cost is set to increase by between £450-£800, to a total of £2.2k”. British MP Naz Shah has written a letter to the UK’s Secretary of State for Transport, Grant Shapps, asking him to review the decision to keep Pakistan on the Red list.

Blaming the government for fueling the spread of the Delta variant by failing to place India on the red list in March, she said the UK government’s decision “seems to be swayed by politics”. India’s seven-day infection rate is 20 per 100,000 people and is now on the Amber list but Pakistan, whose seven-day infection rate is just 14 per 100,000 people, well below the vast majority of amber list destinations, remains on the red list,” she wrote in her letter.

In response, the UK government says that it is the experts from the Joint Biosecurity Centre who “give us their overview of every country and their recommendation about where a country should sit” in the list. In the face of facts and figures, to give such a response suggests there is more than meets the eye