After months of costly shutdowns, closed borders and reduced personal freedoms, the concept of vaccine passports is gaining momentum with governments eager to chart their path through the next phase of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Several countries, including China and Israel, have already deployed their own forms of certification that apparently aim to facilitate future international travel or revive activity in sectors of the hardest-hit economies, such as the hospitality industry.
Several others are studying whether to follow the same and adopt the idea of documentation for those who have been vaccinated against the new coronavirus.
Meanwhile, skeptics warn of a number of possible far-reaching adverse effects that have yet to be addressed.
Here’s what you need to know:
What is a vaccine passport?
The vaccine passport can generally be defined as documentation that someone has been inoculated against a virus, in this case, SARS-CoV-2, also known as the new coronavirus.
It could take the form of a signed and sealed certificate or a Quick Response Code (QR) stored on a smartphone.
Israel has deployed a government-validated certificate, known as the “Green Pass,” by which people can prove they have been vaccinated or recovered from COVID-19 [File: Jack Guez/AFP]
The documents could be needed for a variety of activities, from international travel to entry to theaters and restaurants, Dave Archard, chairman of the UK’s Nuffield Council on Bioethics, told Al Jazeera.
Vaccination testing could also become a “discriminatory” working condition, he warned, or lead to a “two-tier society” in which people need documentation to exercise certain social freedoms, such as access to public spaces or internal displacement in countries.
Why are they arguing?
With massive impulses to vaccinate against COVID-19 in several countries, vaccine passports have gained prominence as a potential tool to safely open borders for international travel and boost economic sectors devastated by strict blocking restrictions.
In theory, the ability to demonstrate vaccination evidence could provide a turning point in the pandemic, allowing countries to massively welcome vaccinated visitors and affected companies, especially those operating in the hospitality industry, to continue trade without for the virus.
In reality, however, there are outstanding questions about how these documents would work in practice and urgent concerns about their potential to exacerbate inequalities, erode deprivations, and even hamper efforts to curb COVID-19.
Where and how are they used?
Several countries have already deployed their own versions of passports or vaccine certificates, despite the lack of global consensus on their use.
Israel, for example, has deployed a government-validated certificate, known as the Green Pass, that allows people to prove that they have been vaccinated or recovered from COVID-19 and therefore have presumed immunity.
Passes, which can be printed or stored on a smartphone, are valid for six months from the time of full vaccination. They allow incumbents to participate in a number of restricted activities, such as going to the gym, eating at restaurants, or attending a theatrical performance, albeit with some limitations.
The certificate could also allow holders to travel abroad and avoid quarantine requirements. Israel has already signed an agreement with Greece and Cyprus that allows citizens with COVID-19 vaccination certificates to travel smoothly between the three countries.
The debate on vaccine passports has been fueled by the international deployment of COVID-19 vaccines [File: Kim Hong-Ji/Reuters]
China has also introduced its own form of vaccine passport in the form of a certificate showing the vaccination status of a person and the results of COVID-19 tests.
It is intended as a digital product, but is also available in paper format and is being implemented “to help promote global economic recovery and facilitate cross-border travel,” according to the country’s foreign ministry.
Bahrain has launched a similar product, while Denmark and Sweden are willing to deploy their own certification systems. The European Union is studying a block-wide digital certificate accrediting vaccination, which could make it easier for Europeans to travel in the warmer months ahead.
What are the benefits and risks?
Proponents of vaccine passports argue that they can be used to help safely resume mass international travel and unlock frozen economies.
Indeed, by proving that someone has been vaccinated or recovered from COVID-19, vaccination passports in theory indicate that an individual is not a potential vector of the virus or is at risk for it.
“They say you are no longer a danger and that gives you certain privileges that you would not have if you were a danger. So having a vaccine passport makes sense from that perspective, ”Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz told Al Jazeera.
“But unless we are able to make sure everyone has access to vaccines, it introduces significant inequality.”
Stiglitz’s warning is one of the most pressing concerns of vaccine passport skeptics, namely that global inequality in access to doses means that any deployment of certification, in turn, would unfairly discriminate against those people. of nations with fewer vaccine supplies.
Even if the doses are available more uniformly worldwide, the current range of vaccines used and their different rates of effectiveness, meanwhile, reduce the possibility of creating any kind of uniform certification, Danny Altmann, professor of immunology at Imperial College London, told Al Jazeera.
“We have billions of people who have not had access to any vaccine or vaccines in different countries that have very different immunogenicity and difference. [have been] tested in markedly different antibody tests. How can an international documentation system be adapted to its full size? “He said.