But as we continue the long march toward herd immunity, or the tipping point when enough people are inoculated to halt community spread of the virus, there is a growing question about whether proof of vaccination will soon be required to get back to daily activities like eating in restaurants, flying on planes, or traveling abroad.
After a long year under various stages of lockdown to slow the spread of the Covid-19 virus, with borders closed, travel restricted, and trips and parties and meals and meetings and events canceled, vaccinations are offering the world a potential return to normalcy. As the world waits to achieve herd immunity, governments and businesses are increasingly looking for ways to tell who has been inoculated from those who have not. This pursuit has stirred up discussions of what most governments and media outlets are calling “vaccine passports.”
The travel industry—and airlines especially—are lobbying for
a standardization of health forms like vaccine status and COVID-19 test
results.
What is a “vaccine passport?”
“Vaccine passports are essentially a verified way of showing
that people have received immunizations,” explains Peter Chin-Hong, an
infectious disease specialist at University of California, San Francisco. The
passports are a modern twist on classic vaccine cards. People who have needed
to show proof of a yellow fever or cholera vaccination to travel to parts of
the world know the drill: A vaccine passport would be a digital or paper
document showing that the bearer had received a Covid-19 vaccination or, in
some cases, has antibodies to the virus or recently tested negative. Those with
the passports could travel to certain states and countries, likely without
quarantining or testing.
What states and countries are considering vaccine passports?
As the world watches, states like Hawaii and New York. and
countries including Saudi Arabia, Denmark, Sweden, Hungary, Poland and
Australia are already experimenting with some version of a vaccine passport, or
they are in the planning stages of doing so, David Studdert, professor of
Medicine and Law at Stanford University, told public radio show Take Two.
Additionally, 27 member states of the European Union are considering some form
of a vaccine-certification system to allow easier cross-border travel in the EU
in the form of a Digital Green Certificate. While domestic travel has its own
app-based monitoring system, China has rolled out a digital passport for
international travel. Other countries are using vaccine passports as a way to
open their doors for tourists. Belize has already said it would welcome
vaccinated travelers without testing or quarantine and Iceland, Georgia, the
Seychelles and Lebanon have opened borders to vaccinated U.S. travelers. “It’s
an increasing number of random countries, but no coordinated effort,” says
Chin-Hong.
What are the benefits of vaccine passports?
These moves could be a lifeline for the struggling tourism
industry, which is estimating more than $1 trillion in losses due to Covid-19.
Tourism and travel have taken such huge hits due to the coronavirus that it’s
no surprise that the airline industry is rallying behind the vaccine passport
idea. The International Air Transport Association, which represents 290
airlines worldwide, is already testing its own app-based IATA Travel Pass, which
stores passport, vaccination and travel records as well as Covid-19 test
results. IBM has also come up with the Digital Health Pass, called Excelsior
Pass. It’s a blockchain-based app designed to protect privacy while making it
easy to flash vaccination records or test results. It’s currently being tested
by the state of New York with hopes for a bigger rollout soon.
However, vaccine passports aren’t just being proposed for
travel. They may be used as a green light for the vaccinated to attend concerts
or go to see a favorite team play, while the unvaccinated are kept out. Israel,
the country with the fastest vaccination rollout, has already created a “green
pass” that gives special privileges and access to its vaccinated citizens.
“They have opened up certain activities to people who've been vaccinated versus
people who have not been vaccinated using a QR code,” explains Chin-Hong. “And
people in the U.S., for example, are looking at this model.”
As more venues open up to people with proof of vaccination,
health experts hope that the lure of a vaccine passport could result in more
people stepping forward to get vaccinated. That could be an important way for
the U.S. to fight vaccine hesitancy. Thirty percent of all American adults will
choose to not get a Covid-19 vaccine, according to a recent NPR/PBS
NewsHour/Marist poll. Those numbers may change if vaccine passports open doors
and borders.
Vaccinations and the vaccine passports may even become
mandatory. “We've been hearing about workplaces that are introducing ideas that
they make it mandatory,” says Chin-Hong. “And we have some school districts
rumbling about making movements towards that.” Of course, the current crop of
Covid vaccines are not currently authorized for use in children under the age
of 16, but may be by September.
What are the drawbacks?
Mandates on vaccinations and vaccine passports aren’t
without controversy, of course. Legislation has been introduced in several
states, including Montana and Iowa, to ban discrimination based on vaccination
status for employment or enrollment in schools.
While vaccine passports sound like one way to open the world
back up, some health experts don’t see vaccination as a green light for travel
just yet. “A vaccine passport is not a free pass to not use protection or to
let your guard down,” says Chin-Hong. “Given that no vaccine is 100 percent
effective, while Covid is going around [a vaccine] just becomes one important
strategy in which we can protect ourselves, but it's not the only measure.” Chin-Hong
also thinks it’s strange that the U.S. would require proof of vaccinations that
have been cleared by the FDA “for emergency use” only, even though full
clearance might come soon.
Last month, the World Health Organization released a
statement urging countries away from vaccine passports, pointing out that
“there are still critical unknowns regarding the efficacy of vaccination in
reducing transmission” and citing the “limited availability of vaccines.”
Globally, some countries have stockpiles of vaccines, while others struggle to
vaccinate their frontline workers and people with a higher risk from Covid.
Even in the U.S., which has been inoculating around three million people a day,
as global health management researcher Yara M. Asi points out in a piece for
The Conversation, vaccine distribution hasn’t exactly been equitable. Black
Americans have been receiving vaccinations at half the rate of white Americans,
a disparity that is even more marked for Hispanic Americans. Requiring
vaccination to travel just adds to that inequity.
Additionally, any app that stores health records will run
into privacy and fraud concerns. Plus, while vaccination records for yellow
fever and the like were kept on physical cards, these days it is more likely
that a vaccine passport would be stored as a QR code or some other digital
proof kept on a smartphone. While Israelis have the option of a digital or
paper green pass, the risk of fraud or counterfeit vaccination forms is leading
many countries to think digital. For instance, England is considering an
app-based passport, and, according to Chin-Hong, much of the vaccine passport
conversation in the U.S. has revolved around apps. While handy for some, many
people around the world do not have internet access, let alone smartphones.
It’s this reliance on digital technology that is making some people nervous
about requiring proof of vaccination for travel, or even work or school. “I
think it's really problematic if not all people have equal access to a
particular intervention,” says Chin-Hong.
How likely is it that the Nigeria will implement a vaccine
passport?
Despite those concerns, it’s likely some form of vaccine passport is coming, most likely in some sort of public-private partnership. Coordinating those efforts and ensuring users’ medical records and vaccine certifications are kept secure and also accessible will prove a major challenge.
Having received 3.94 million doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccines in early March, Nigeria has since commenced vaccination beginning with healthcare workers who are often at the risk of exposure to infections being the first responders to patients.
The country also received 300,000 doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines from the telecom giant, MTN, on Sunday, according to the Chairman of PTF on COVID-19, Boss Mustapha.
Additional information by SMITHSONIANMAG.COM
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