TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) – Violet light bathed the club stage as 300 people, masked and socially distanced, erupted in soft applause. For the first time since the pandemic began, Israeli musician Aviv Geffen approached his electric piano and began playing for an audience sitting in front of him.
“A miracle is happening here tonight,” Geffen told the crowd.
Still, the resuscitation experience Monday night over a mall north of Tel Aviv at night was not accessible to everyone. Only people who showed a “green passport” proving that they had been vaccinated or had recovered from COVID-19 could enter.
The very controlled concert offered a vision of a future that many long for after months of COVID-19 restrictions. Governments say that getting vaccinated and having the right documentation will soften the way we travel, entertain ourselves and other social gatherings in a post-pandemic world.
But it also raises the possibility of further dividing the world along the lines of wealth and access to vaccines, creating ethical and logistical issues that have alarmed policymakers around the world.
Other governments are watching as Israel controls the world’s fastest vaccination program and addresses the ethics of using traits as diplomatic currency and power..
Within Israel, green passports or badges obtained through an application are the currency of the kingdom. Recently, the country reached agreements with Greece and Cyprus to recognize the green insignia and more agreements are expected to boost tourism.
Anyone who does not want or cannot get the blows that confer immunity will be left “behind,” Health Minister Yuli Edelstein said.
“It’s really the only way to go right now,” Geffen said in an interview with The Associated Press.
The controls at the gates of the club, which only admitted those who could prove to be fully vaccinated, allowed for at least an appearance of normalcy.
“People can’t live their lives in the new world without them,” he said. “It simply came to our notice then. We have to.”
The vaccine is not available to everyone in the world, either by supply or by cost. And some people don’t want it, for religious or other reasons. In Israel, a country of 9.3 million people, only half of the adult population has received the necessary doses.
There is new government pressure to encourage vaccinations. Israeli lawmakers passed a law Wednesday that allows the health ministry to disclose information about people who have not yet been vaccinated. According to the policy, names can be given to the Ministries of Education, Labor, Social Affairs and Social Services, as well as local governments, “for the purpose of allowing these bodies to encourage people to get vaccinated.”
The government appeals to the emotional longing of other people’s company, in Israel’s famous foreign markets, at concerts like Geffen’s and elsewhere.
“With the Green Pass, the doors only open for you. You could go out to restaurants, work out in the gym, watch a show, ”he read an ad on Feb. 21, the day much of the economy reopened after a six-week shutdown.
A question then arose at the heart of global research to conquer the pandemic that has slowed economies and killed nearly 2.5 million people.:
“How to get the pass? Go get vaccinated right now. ”
It is so simple in Israel, that it has enough vaccine to inoculate everyone over the age of 16, even though the government has been criticized for sharing only small amounts with Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said this week that he intends to send the excess vaccine to some allies in the country. Israel’s attorney general said Thursday night that the plan has been frozen while reviewing legality.
Most countries do not have enough vaccine, which highlights the marked ethical landscape of who can get it and how to lift the burden of COVID-19.
“The basic principle of human rights is equity and non-discrimination,” said Lawrence Gostin, a professor at Georgetown University and director of the World Health Organization’s Collaborating Center on National and Global Health Law. Health.
“There is a huge moral crisis in equity globally because in high-income countries like Israel or the United States or EU countries, we are likely to reach herd immunity by the end of this year,” he said. “But for many low-income countries, most people will not be vaccinated for many years. Do we really want to give priority to people who already have so many privileges? “
It is an issue that haunts the international community, as richer countries are beginning to gain strength against coronavirus and some of its variants.
Last April, the initiative known as COVAX was formed by the WHO, with the initial goal of getting vaccinated in poor countries almost at the same time as shots were fired in rich countries. That goal has been missed and 80 percent of the 210 million doses administered worldwide have been administered in just ten countries, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said this week.
Ghana on Wednesday became the first of 92 countries to get free vaccines with the initiative. COVAX announced that approximately 600,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine have reached the African nation. This is a fraction of the 2 billion shots the WHO intends to make this year.
As these countries begin to be vaccinated, richer nations begin to talk about logistics, security, privacy, and “green passport” policies.
The British government said it is considering issuing some kind of “COVID state certification” that can be used by employers and organizers of major events as it prepares to ease lock-in restrictions this year.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson said politics could cause problems.
“We cannot be discriminatory against people who, for whatever reason, cannot get the vaccine,” he said.
Many European countries are struggling to develop their own vaccine certification systems to help revive summer travel, risking different systems not working properly on the continent’s borders.
“I think there’s great potential for not working well together,” said Andrew Bud, CEO of facial biometrics company iProov, which is testing its digital vaccination passport technology at the UK National Health Service.
But the technical knots around vaccine passports may be the easiest to resolve, he said.
The big challenges “are mainly ethical, social, political and legal. How to balance the fundamental rights of citizens … with the benefits for society “.
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Associated Press writers Danica Kirka and Kelvin Chan contributed to London.
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