After months of costly shutdowns, closed borders and curtailed personal freedoms, the concept of vaccine passports is gaining popularity with governments eager to push their way through the next phase of the COVID-19 pandemic.
A number of countries, including China and Israel, have already rolled out their own forms of certification, ostensibly intended to facilitate future international travel or to revitalize activities in hard-hit economies, such as hospitality.
Several others are considering whether to follow suit and embrace the idea of documentation for those vaccinated against the novel coronavirus.
Skeptics, meanwhile, are warning of a slew of potential broad side effects that have yet to be addressed.
Here’s What You Need to Know:
What is a vaccine passport?
A vaccine passport can be broadly defined as a piece of documentation showing that someone has been vaccinated against a virus – in this case, SARS-CoV-2, also known as the new coronavirus.
It can be in the form of a signed and stamped certificate or a Quick Response (QR) code stored on a smartphone.
Israel has rolled out a government-validated certificate, known as a ‘green pass’, that allows people to prove they have been vaccinated against or recovered from COVID-19. [File: Jack Guez/AFP]
The documents may become needed for a range of activities, from international travel to access to theaters and restaurants, Dave Archard, chairman of the UK’s Nuffield Council on Bioethics, told Al Jazeera.
Evidence of vaccination could also become a “discriminatory” employment condition, he warned, or could lead to a “two-part society” where people need documentation to exercise certain social freedoms, such as access to public spaces or traveling internally within countries. .
Why are they discussed?
As massive COVID-19 vaccinations gain momentum in several countries, vaccine passports have become increasingly popular as a possible tool to safely reopen borders for international travel and to boost economic sectors ravaged by strict lockdown restrictions.
In theory, the ability to show proof of vaccination could mark a turning point in the pandemic, by enabling countries to welcome vaccinated visitors en masse and resuming trade by hard-hit businesses – particularly in the hospitality industry – without fear of the virus.
In reality, however, there are open questions about how such documents would work in practice and urgent concerns about their potential to exacerbate inequalities, erode privacy, and possibly even hinder attempts to curb COVID-19.
Where and how are they used?
Several countries have already rolled out their own versions of vaccine passports or certificates, despite a lack of global consensus on their use.
For example, Israel has rolled out a government-validated certificate, known as a green pass, that allows people to demonstrate that they have been vaccinated against or recovered from COVID-19, thus assuming immunity.
The passes, which can be printed or saved on a smartphone, are valid for six months from the time of full vaccination. They allow holders to participate in a range of otherwise restricted activities, such as going to the gym, dining in restaurants, or attending a theater performance, albeit with some restrictions.
The certificate can also allow holders to travel abroad and bypass quarantine requirements. Israel has already signed an agreement with Greece and Cyprus that will allow citizens with COVID-19 vaccination certificates to travel unimpeded between the three countries.
Discussion of vaccine passports has fueled the international rollout of COVID-19 vaccines [File: Kim Hong-Ji/Reuters]
China has also introduced its own vaccine passport in the form of a certificate showing a person’s vaccination status and COVID-19 test results.
It is intended as a digital product, but is also available in paper form and is being rolled out “to help promote the world’s economic recovery and facilitate cross-border travel,” said the country’s State Department.
Bahrain has launched a similar product, while Denmark and Sweden are ready to roll out their own certification schemes. The European Union is considering a block-wide digital certificate as proof of vaccination, which could facilitate travel for Europeans in the coming warmer months.
What are the benefits and risks?
Proponents of vaccine passports claim they can be used to safely resume massive international travel and unlock frozen economies.
Effectively, by proving that someone has been vaccinated against or recovered from COVID-19, vaccine passports theoretically indicate that a person is not a potential vector for the virus or is at risk themselves.
They say you are no longer a danger, and that gives you certain privileges that you wouldn’t have if you were a danger. So from that perspective it makes sense to have a vaccine passport, ”US-based Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz told Al Jazeera.
“But unless we can ensure that everyone has access to vaccines, this will introduce significant inequality.”
Stiglitz’s caveat is one of the most pressing concerns raised by those skeptical of vaccine passports – namely that the yawning global inequality in dose access means that any rollout of certification would in turn unfairly discriminate against those people in countries with fewer vaccine stocks.
Even as doses become more evenly available on a global scale, the current range of vaccines in use, and their different efficacy rates, meanwhile, diminishes the prospect of some form of uniform certification being created, Danny Altmann, a professor of immunology at Imperial College London, told Al Jazeera.
“We have billions of people who have had varying degrees of access to no vaccine, or vaccines in different countries with vastly different immunogenicity and [have been] tested in distinctly different antibody tests. How can this ensure that there is one measure for all international documentation systems? ” he said.