An immunity passport, also known as an immunity certificate, recovery certificate or release certificate, is a document attesting that its bearer is immune to a contagious disease. The concept has drawn much attention during the COVID-19 pandemic as a potential way to contain the pandemic and permit faster economy recovery.
Concept
Immunity certificates are a legal document granted by a testing authority following a serology test demonstrating that the bearer has antibodies making them immune to a disease. These antibodies can either be produced naturally by recovering from the disease, or triggered through vaccination. Such certificates are practical only if all of the following conditions can be satisfied:
Recovered patients have protective immunity that prevents them from being reinfected
The protective immunity is long-lasting
The pathogen mutates sufficiently slowly for immunity to work against most strains
If reliable immunity certificates were available, they could be used to exempt holders from quarantine and social distancing restrictions, permitting them to work and travel.
As of May 2020, it remains unclear if any of these conditions have been met for COVID-19. On April 24, 2020, the World Health Organization stated that "At this point in the pandemic, there is not enough evidence about the effectiveness of antibody-mediated immunity to guarantee the accuracy of an 'immunity passport'".
History
has been used since ancient times as a method of limiting the spread of infectious disease. Consequently, there has also been a need for documents attesting that a person has completed quarantine or is otherwise known not to be infectious. Since the 1700s, various Italian states issued fedi di sanità to exempt their bearers from quarantine. In 1959, the WHO created the International Certificate of Vaccination as a certificate of vaccination, particularly for yellow fever. However, these are certificates of vaccination, not immunity. An early advocate of immunity passports during the COVID-19 pandemic was Sam Rainsy, the Cambodian opposition leader. In exile and under confinement in Paris, he proposed immunity passports as a way to help restart the economy in a series of articles which he began in March 2020 and published in and . The proposals were also published in French. In May 2020, Chile started issuing "release certificates" to patients who have recovered from COVID-19, but "the documents will not yetcertify immunity". Many governments including Finland, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States have expressed interest in the concept.
Arguments
about immunity certificates have been raised by organizations including Human Rights Watch. According to HRW, requiring immunity certificates for work or travel could force people into taking tests or risk losing their jobs, create a perverse incentive for people to intentionally infect themselves to acquire immunity certificates, and risk of creating a black market of forged or otherwise falsified immunity certificates. By restricting social, civic, and economic activities, immunity passports may "compound existing gender, race, ethnicity, and nationality inequities." On the other side, it is argued that it would be disproportionate to deprive immune persons – who can neither infect themselves nor others – of their basic freedoms. This would instead effectively constitute a case of collective punishment. Accordingly, Govind Persad and Ezekiel J. Emanuel stress that an immunity passport would follow the “principle of the ‘least restrictive alternative’“ and could even benefit society:
Covid-free certificates
In contrast to immunity certificates, so-called Covid-free certificates assert a person's Covid test result for a short period of time. In this context, Covid-free certificates link a person's identity to the Covid test result.
