TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) – Violet light bathed the club stage as 300 people, masked and socially distant, burst into soft applause. For the first time since the pandemic started, Israeli musician Aviv Geffen stepped on his electric piano and began playing in front of an audience seated right in front of him.
“A miracle is happening here tonight,” Geffen said to the crowd.
Still, the CPR experience was not open to everyone on Monday night above a mall north of Tel Aviv night. Only people with a “green passport” showing that they had been vaccinated or recovered from COVID-19 could enter.
The highly controlled concert offered a glimpse of a future many yearn for after months of COVID-19 restrictions. Governments say vaccination and having proper documentation will pave the way for travel, entertainment and other social gatherings in a post-pandemic world.
But it also raises the prospect of further dividing the world along the lines of wealth and access to vaccines, creating ethical and logistical issues that have alarmed decision-makers around the world.
Other governments see Israel go through world’s fastest vaccination program and grapple with the ethics of using shots as diplomatic currency and power
Within Israel, green passports or badges obtained through an app are the currency of the empire. The country has recently signed agreements with Greece and Cyprus to recognize each other’s green badges, and more such agreements that boost tourism are expected.
Anyone who does not want to or cannot get the injections that confer immunity will “be left behind,” said Health Minister Yuli Edelstein.
“It’s really the only way forward right now,” Geffen said in an interview with The Associated Press.
The checks at the doors of the club, allowing only those who could prove they had been fully vaccinated, showed at least a semblance of normalcy.
“People cannot live their lives in the new world without them,” he said. ‘We have to take the vaccines. We have to.”
The vaccine is not available to everyone in the world, both due to its delivery and cost. And some people don’t want it, for religious or other reasons. In Israel, a country of 9.3 million people, only about half of the adult population has received the required two doses.
There is new pressure from the government to stimulate vaccinations. Israeli lawmakers on Wednesday passed a law allowing the Ministry of Health to release information about people who have yet to be vaccinated. The policy allows names to be released to the ministries of education, labor, social affairs and social services, as well as to local governments, “with the aim of enabling these agencies to encourage people to get vaccinated.”
The government appeals to the emotional longing for the company of others – in Israel’s legendary open-air markets, at concerts such as Geffen’s and elsewhere.
“With the Green Pass, the doors simply open for you. You could go to restaurants, work out in the gym, attend a show, ”read an announcement on Feb. 21, the day much of the economy reopened after a six-week shutdown.
Then it raised a question that was central to the global quest to overcome the pandemic that hampered economies and killed nearly 2.5 million people
“How do you get the pass? Go and get vaccinated now. “
It’s so simple in Israel, which has enough vaccine to inoculate anyone over 16, although the government has been criticized for sharing only small amounts with Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said this week that he plans to send excess vaccine to some of the country’s allies. Israel’s Attorney General said Thursday night that the plan has been frozen while assessing its legality.
Most countries don’t have enough vaccine, highlighting the fraught ethical landscape from who can get it and how to ease the burden of COVID-19.
“The core principle of human rights is equality and non-discrimination,” said Lawrence Gostin, a professor at Georgetown University and director of the World Health Organization’s Collaborating Center on National and Global Health Law.
“There is a huge moral crisis in equality worldwide, because in high-income countries like Israel or the United States or the EU countries, we are likely to get immunity by the end of this year,” he said. “But for many low-income countries, most people will not be vaccinated for years. Do we really want to give priority to people who already have so many privileges? “
It’s a question haunting the international community as wealthier countries begin to gain traction against the coronavirus and some of its variants.
Last April, the initiative known as COVAX was formed by the WHO, with the original goal of getting vaccines to poor countries at about the same time that shots were being rolled out in rich countries. It failed to meet that target, and 80% of the 210 million doses administered worldwide have been given in just 10 countries, WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said this week.
Ghana became the first of 92 countries to receive free vaccines through the initiative on Wednesday. COVAX announced that approximately 600,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine have arrived in the African country. That’s a fraction of the 2 billion images the WHO wants to take this year.
As those countries begin vaccinations, wealthier countries are starting to talk about logistics, security, privacy, and ‘green passport’ policies.
The UK government said it is studying the possibility of issuing some sort of “COVID status certification” that could be used by employers and organizers of major events as it prepares to ease lockdown restrictions this year.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the policy could cause problems.
“We must not discriminate against people who, for whatever reason, cannot receive the vaccine,” he said.
Many countries in Europe are struggling to develop their own vaccine certification systems to reinvigorate summer travel, posing the risk of different systems not working properly across the continent’s borders.
“I think there is enormous potential for not working well together,” said Andrew Bud, CEO of iProov, a facial biometrics company testing its digital vaccination passport technology within the UK’s National Health Service.
But the technical knots around vaccine passports may be easier to fix, he said.
The bigger challenges “are mainly ethical, social, political and legal. How to balance citizens’ fundamental rights … with the benefits to society. “
Associated Press writers Danica Kirka and Kelvin Chan in London contributed.
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