Vaccine passports during the COVID-19 pandemic
A vaccine passport or proof of vaccination is an immunity passport employed as a credential in countries and jurisdictions as part of efforts to control the COVID-19 pandemic via vaccination. A vaccine passport is typically issued by a government or health authority, and usually consists of a digital or printed record. Some credentials may include a scannable QR code, which can also be provisioned via mobile app. It may or may not use a COVID-19 vaccine card as a basis of authentication.
The use of vaccine passports is based on the general presumption that a vaccinated individual would be less likely to transmit SARS-CoV-2 to others, and less likely to experience a severe outcome if they were to be infected, thus making it relatively safer for them to congregate. A vaccine passport is typically coordinated with policies enforced by individual businesses, or enforceable public health orders, that require patrons to present proof of vaccination for COVID-19 as a condition of entry or service.
Government-mandated use of vaccine passports typically applies to discretionary public spaces and events, and not essential businesses, such as retail stores or health care. In France, Italy, Ireland, and Canada, vaccine uptake increased after various levels of governments announced plans to introduce vaccine passports. An intention by some jurisdictions is to prevent future lockdowns and restrictions.
Vaccine passports are controversial and have raised scientific, ethical and legal concerns. Critics have also argued that vaccine passports violate civil liberties via coercion. In the United States, there is no vaccine passport at a federal level, and some US states have preemptively banned vaccine passports in certain public and private sector contexts, citing discrimination and privacy concerns. England initially decided against mandating vaccine passports due to worries that discrimination and economic harm would occur, but later joined the other nations of the United Kingdom in mandating vaccine passports due to the threat of the Omicron variant.
History and background
Many governments, including Finland and Germany, expressed early interest in the concept. Vaccine passports were seen as a potential way to permit a faster economic recovery from large-scale lockdowns that apply to all residents, improve the confidence of patrons concerned for their health and safety, and to incentivize vaccination in order for a population to potentially reach "herd immunity".In May 2020, Chile started issuing "release certificates" to patients who had recovered from COVID-19, but "the documents will not yet certify immunity". Many governments including Finland, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States expressed interest in the concept.
The Royal Society published a report on 19 February 2021 where a lead author of the report, Professor Melinda Mills, Director of the Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science at the University of Oxford said: “Understanding what a vaccine passport could be used for is a fundamental question – is it literally a passport to allow international travel or could it be used domestically to allow holders greater freedoms? The intended use will have significant implications across a wide range of legal and ethical issues that need to be fully explored and could inadvertently discriminate or exacerbate existing inequalities.” The report lists 12 essential criteria for an international standard.
On 12 March 2021, Ecma International announced its intention to create an international standard which prevents counterfeits and protects private data as much as possible in a "Call for Participation on Vaccine Passports International Standardization" that referenced the earlier report from the UK's Royal Society. In August 2021, Ecma International announced revisions to Ecma-417 relevant to standards for vaccine passports.
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 The Geopolitics and The Brussels Times. The proposals were also published in French. The idea became increasingly relevant as evidence of lasting acquired immunity became clear.
Proponents of the idea such as Sam Rainsy, co-founder of the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party have argued that immunity, whether acquired naturally or through vaccination, is a resource which needs to be used to limit the impact of the pandemic on the global economy. Many people in Cambodia depend entirely for their living on a tourism industry which has been wiped out. Poor countries can also benefit from recording immunological status as this will reduce wastage of scarce vaccines. The immunity passport proposed by Rainsy was effectively adopted in the EU under the name of "health pass".
it was not yet clear whether vaccinated people that remain asymptomatic are still contagious and are thus silent spreaders of the virus putting unvaccinated people at risk. "A lot of people are thinking that once they get vaccinated, they’re not going to have to wear masks anymore," said Michal Tal, an immunologist at Stanford University. "It’s really going to be critical for them to know if they have to keep wearing masks, because they could still be contagious."
In January 2021, Israel announced that Israelis who had received their second vaccination and those who had proof of recovery from infection would be eligible for a Green Pass, exempting them from isolation requirements and mandatory COVID-19 tests, including those on arrival from overseas. In February 2021, Israel became one of the first countries to implement a vaccine passport system, dubbed the Green Pass. They are required in order to access venues such as gyms, hotels, bars, and restaurants. In October 2021, Israel announced an update to its guidelines, requiring that the most recent vaccine dose to have been during the past six months. This change made Israel the first country to make a booster shot a requirement for its vaccine passport system.
By region
Africa
Morocco
In August 2021, Morocco established a nightly curfew between 23:00 and 04:30, exempting those fully vaccinated. The curfew was lifted in November 2021.Asia
Azerbaijan
Beginning on 1 September 2021, Azerbaijan required proof of vaccination for people over 18 to enter virtually all public spaces, and a national mandate of 1 October required vaccination of all state-regulated workers.China
In February 2020, China started to use digital "health codes", available on a variety of platforms including WeChat and Alipay with scannable QR barcodes displaying a "traffic light" system of colours to enter public transport, shops, restaurants and malls. It was used 40 billion times between February and March.In March 2021, an "International Travel Health Certificate" was created. In March 2021, the government of China rolled out the world's first COVID-19 vaccine passport system through a partnership with Alipay and WeChat. The system provides a health certificate that includes an individual's vaccine status and the results of COVID-19 testing. Initially, the system would only indicate that an individual had been vaccinated if they received a Chinese-made coronavirus vaccine, leading to criticism, though by April 2021 the system began to accept records of receiving the Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, and Janssen vaccines. As of March 2021, the app was optional and its use was restricted to Chinese citizens. The digital health passport is intended to better facilitate travel. Privacy advocates and Chinese netizens have expressed concerns regarding the potential invasive data collection and the use of data for non-health monitoring purposes.