Vaccine passports could be available soon to help people get back to their lives – but them face numerous scientific, social and political barriers to being accepted.
The big picture: Reliable and accessible evidence of vaccine-induced protection against the new coronavirus could accelerate international travel and economic reopening, but the obstacles to large-scale adoption are so great that they may never come to fruition.
Driving the news: The secure digital identity application CLEAR and CommonPass, a healthcare application that allows users to access vaccination records and COVID-19 test results, will work together to provide a vaccine passport service, according to my colleague of Axios, Erica Pandey.
- The news comes as a growing number of countries and companies are discussing plans to introduce similar vaccine passports that could help protection return to normal life and travel as soon as possible.
- “To restart the economy, to save certain industries, I think you need a solution like this,” Eric Piscini, vice president of IBM who oversaw the development of the company’s new health passport application, told the New York Times.
Yes, but: There are numerous health, ethical, and operational issues that need to be addressed before vaccine passports can become an effective part of everyday life.
Health: Medical experts are not yet fully aware of the effectiveness of vaccinations (or exposure to the virus) in preventing subsequent transmission of COVID-19.
- Although the CDC will soon release new guidelines on social activity for fully vaccinated people, current recommendations still call for them to continue wearing masks and practicing social distancing.
- Until it becomes clear that vaccination effectively prevents transmission, there is a limit to the usefulness of any vaccine passport for public health, especially if emerging variants make some vaccines less protective.
- “The usefulness of a vaccine passport is only as good as proof of how long immunity lasts,” David Salisbury, an associate member of the Chatham House think tank, told Bloomberg. “You could find yourself with a stamp on your passport that lasts longer than blood antibodies.”
Ethics: The most obvious use case for vaccine passports is that of international travel, which has been affected by heavy quarantine restrictions. But this system runs the risk of blocking billions of people who cannot or do not want to receive the vaccine.
- The EU has been discussing the creation of a vaccine passport, with tourism-dependent countries such as Greece at the helm. But Germany and France, where vaccine launches have been low and hesitation is high, have reservations and any such system seems to be months away.
- A greater ethical concern is that of many people in developing countries who may not have access to vaccines of any kind for months or even years as rich nations accumulate supplies.
- And if vaccine passports are used not only for international travel, but also to allow people to work and engage in social life nationwide, they could create uneven paralyzing barriers that paradoxically could strengthen vaccine vacillation.
Operational: Passports for international travel are regulated by governments and have decades of history behind them, but there is no such unitary system for vaccine passports, which governments and companies are introducing with different standards, making them fraud target.
- The US, in particular, has a decentralized medical system that can make it difficult for people to access their medical records, especially if they do not have digital literacy.
- “I can almost guarantee 100% that fraud will occur,” says Jane Lee, a trusted and security architect for cybersecurity firm Sift. “We will have a lot of bad actors where they intend to offer a service that will provide some sort of vaccination passport, but it really is a fishing campaign.”
Be smart: None of these obstacles are insurmountable on their own. But, as we have seen with the failures of digital contact tracking, the fact that there is a technological solution does not mean that it is effective or adopted by the public.
- “There’s a huge motivation for this to work socially,” says Kevin Trilli, product manager at Onfido, an identification verification company. “But there are many government problems that will make it difficult to implement the system.”
- There is also hourly pressure at work, especially in the US, where vaccination rates have risen. The more people are vaccinated, the less value there will be in creating a complex system to sift through the protégés of the unprotected.
The summary: Some form of vaccination visa will probably be introduced for international travel, but it seems unlikely that they will become a passport to resume normal life.