Dr. Scott Gottlieb said on Monday that Americans with digital access to their Covid vaccination status would be helpful in navigating the coronavirus pandemic in the coming months.
In an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” the former Food and Drug Administration commissioner tried to downplay privacy concerns at the heart of the backlash against verification requirements.
“The whole discussion about vaccine passports has raised a lot of concerns about whether or not it will be used to restrict people’s access to things they would otherwise do,” said Gottlieb, a Pfizer board member who creates one. . of three Covid vaccines approved in the US for emergency use “The use case for this information is likely to allow access to things that would otherwise be restricted.”
Gottlieb pointed to visits to nursing homes or hospitals in the fall when he said he expects the number of coronavirus cases to rise again. Last winter, “nursing homes banned visitors. Hospitals banned visitors,” he said. “You could see a situation where those institutions could get people to visit if they can prove they’ve been vaccinated.”
Information about Covid vaccines administered is being fed into the same system used by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to track childhood vaccinations, Gottlieb said. “The problem with the system is that it was never designed to be truly accessible to consumers, so consumers really don’t have a way to get the information to prove they’ve been vaccinated right now.”
The CDC folks’ paper charts currently received in the making of their Covid shots are also unlikely to work, he said. “They are now available on eBay … so people will not accept the cards as proof of vaccination.”
Therefore, digital documentation of Covid vaccine status should be available to Americans, he said. “How they choose to use it is up to them,” said Gottlieb, who was FDA chief in the Trump administration from 2017 to 2019.
Efforts are underway to develop Covid digital vaccine records, including a high-profile group backed by Microsoft and the Mayo Clinic known as the Vaccination Credential Initiative. The coalition said earlier this month that it wants to make the technology it develops available in May.
IBM is working with New York State on a digital health card that uses blockchain technology to verify a person’s test or vaccine credentials. Walmart, which shoots at its stores, recently backed calls for vaccine certificates.
The debate around so-called vaccine passports has become contentious as some critics express concerns about civil liberty. In Florida, for example, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis signed an executive order this month preventing companies from requiring someone to show they received a Covid vaccine as a condition of service.
Last week, the Biden government banned vaccine passports at the federal level. White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Tuesday, “There will be no federal vaccination database and there will be no federal mandate requiring everyone to obtain a single vaccination record.”
Gottlieb said, “in certain limited circumstances,” he expects people to have to prove they’ve been vaccinated against Covid. “So I think people should think about this differently,” he added. “Right now, as consumers, we don’t have this information, and we should.”
Disclosure: Scott Gottlieb is a contributor to CNBC and serves on the boards of Pfizer, genetic testing start-up Tempus, healthcare technology company Aetion Inc. and biotech company IlluminaHe is also co-chair of Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings‘ And Royal Caribbean‘s “Healthy Sail Panel.” The Associated Press contributed to this report.