Support for Covid-19 vaccine passports is growing, with European and Chinese support

EU leaders predict it will take three months to run the program.

“The goal is to enable them gradually [EU citizens] to travel safely to the European Union or abroad, for work or tourism reasons, “said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

Last week, the UK also said it was examining the pros and cons of digital passports, after initially ruling them out.

The Biden administration has not said whether Covid-19 vaccines will take into account U.S. travel requirements. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has not yet issued guidelines on the subject and says there are no established international standards for vaccines or documentation on vaccination.

“Until then, all passengers traveling to the United States, regardless of vaccination status or antibodies, must provide a negative Covid-19 test result or recovery documentation,” the CDC spokeswoman said. Caitlin Shockey.

Many disease experts and the World Health Organization are wary of vaccine passports, as it is not yet clear whether or not vaccinated people can transmit the virus. However, governments are increasingly approaching the idea as a potentially useful tool to sustain post-pandemic economic recovery.

China’s move marks a departure from its previous skepticism regarding vaccine passports. His Foreign Ministry said Beijing was willing to explore the issue, “to provide a reliable guarantee for a new healthy, safe and regulated order for cross-border exchanges of people.”

China now expects to inoculate 40 percent of its population by the end of July, up from the current 3.56 percent, according to Zhong Nanshan, the head of China’s Rov vaccine Covid-19 committee.

The leading epidemiologist at the Chinese Center for Disease Prevention and Control, Wu Zunyou, said the United States could achieve 90% immunity to the herd in August and proposed an opening of trips between the U.S. and China if it occurred.

“If we could remove all political barriers, based only on science, the two countries could be the first two countries to remove all barriers to travel for free,” Wu said.

For his supporters, vaccine passports would allow the resumption of business travel and tourism, which would help economies abandoned by the pandemic recover. In the past year, many countries have imposed direct bans on incoming travelers, and many continue to impose heavy tests and quarantine requirements on visitors and returnees.

Among the strongest proponents of the idea are airlines and tourism-dependent countries, which are pushing to normalize international travel in the summer as much as possible.

The International Air Transport Association will have to launch an app this month that will allow travelers to upload an image of their vaccination documents. These photos would be verified, with staff and software checking to see if, for example, the clinic listed in the document exists and has been providing vaccines.

Finally, travelers should be able to scan their face and thumb at the airport to move freely across borders, said IATA Senior Vice President Nick Careen. Some countries may opt for the system, while others may retain it.

Since the fall, the association has been trying to get WHO support for its proposal, he said, but has made limited progress.

“We continue without them … We have countries that will bow if they don’t get tourists and they’re not small countries: Spain, Greece and Thailand,” Careen said.

Within Europe, the issue has faced tourism-importing sites, such as Cyprus and Greece, that want to revive international travel in the summer, against countries such as Belgium, France and Germany, which are more cautious. Among their concerns is the risk that discrimination against unvaccinated people will be politically problematic in countries like France, where polls show that about half of the population is hesitant to get shot.

So far, the WHO has refused to support the vaccine travel certificate, saying it needs more information. There are two root issues: immunologists still do not know how easily vaccinated people can spread the virus unintentionally, although early indications suggest that this risk may be low.

Second, some WHO leaders have expressed concern that allowing vaccinated people to travel freely while maintaining border closures and mandatory quarantine for others can be discriminatory: 75% of all doses administered so far have been given to only ten countries, according to UN Secretary-General António Guterres. he said in February.

Vaccine passports tend to “restrict travel rather than travel permits,” said Mike Ryan, executive director of the WHO emergency program, last month. “We don’t anticipate it as an immediate need or need, but certainly we will have to discuss it in the coming months.”

While some epidemiologists consider vaccine passports to be a possible way to encourage their absorption, others are concerned that new variants of the disease will spread if people are allowed to cross borders again. and want to see how Europe and North America impose a kind of strict travel ban and the mandatory hotel quarantines seen in New Zealand and Australia.

Governments should eliminate the disease before allowing visitors and then only allow travelers from other places who have eradicated the virus, said Deepti Gurdasani, a tenured professor at Queen Mary University in London, who opposes to vaccine exemptions.

“We really need to rethink our strategy around that,” he said. “From a scientific perspective, this makes no sense at the moment. That kind of thing leads to a false sense of security. “

—Jonathan Cheng, Raffaele Huang and Sabrina Siddiqui contributed to this article.

Write to Drew Hinshaw at [email protected] and Jason Douglas at [email protected]