London, United Kingdom – From Israel to Iceland, several governments around the world are adopting so-called passports for coronavirus vaccines in an attempt to safely re-open borders, thaw costly blocking economies and restore an appearance of normalcy to social life.
Proponents of vaguely defined certificates argue that they have a critical role to play in ending restrictions imposed to reduce the spread of the pandemic, at least in countries with large-scale access to vaccines.
Documents proving inoculation against COVID-19 can mean travel bans and strict requests to stay at home can be suspended, for example, freeing millions and boosting trade.
But skeptics say they pose insurmountable scientific, legal and ethical issues – at least for now – and should not be used in individual countries or as a tool to unlock international travel.
As the debate continues, Al Jazeera asked the opinion of five UK experts.
Here’s what they had to say …
Al Jazeera: Does the current scientific knowledge of COVID-19 and existing vaccines support the use of vaccine passports?
Sarah Chan, bioethics at the University of Edinburgh: One of the main problems with vaccine passports, as they are currently proposed, is that they focus on the individual’s vaccination status as a binary risk indicator, for himself and for others: vaccinated is equal to “safe”, unvaccinated equals “unsafe”.
It is true that vaccination provides some protection against the capture of COVID, but it is not 100 percent effective in 100 percent of individuals; and, most importantly, we do not have enough evidence to say that vaccination prevents people from transmitting the disease to others.
Therefore, although vaccination certainly reduces the risk, both for the individual and for the population, of issuing “passports” that divide us into black and white binary categories and controlling what we can do and where we can go based on that does not seem to be justified. . In fact, giving people a passport that says they are “safe” can actually produce a false sense of security that can result in the further spread of the disease.
The launch of the COVID-19 vaccines has raised hopes of an end to the pandemic, but there are pressing concerns that doses are not being shared equitably and are instead being accumulated by rich countries at the expense of the poorest nations. [File: Francis Mascarenhas/Reuters]
Dave Archard, President of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics: At the moment, there is insufficient evidence that existing approved vaccines significantly reduce transmission, as opposed to susceptibility to serious diseases, and it is [reduced] transmissibility that the passport assumes is given by the vaccine. Furthermore, we still don’t know enough about the duration of any immunity or resistance to the new variants.
Danny Altmann, professor of immunology at Imperial College London: If someone has the broadest possible view on a global health level, perhaps so – people who have received two doses of a tested and licensed vaccine, on average, are less likely to have and transmit COVID than others.
Therefore, if we regulate our air travel / home team / sporting events etc. in that light, we will tend to be safer. This is a bit like the long history of a need for yellow fever vaccines in many countries. Applying this keeps yellow fever low.
Al Jazeera: What are the biggest problems and risks – legal, ethical and other – with the use of vaccine passports?
Ana Beduschi, associate professor of law at the University of Exeter: Digital health passports pose essential questions for the protection of data privacy and human rights, as they use confidential personal health information to create a new distinction between individuals based on their health status, which can be used to determine the degree of freedom that individuals can enjoy.
If digital health passports start to be required as proof of the health status of COVID-19 to access public and private spaces, some people will be able to move around freely – this would be the case for those who would have tested negative for COVID-19 or would have been vaccinated .
On the other hand, those who cannot access or pay for the COVID-19 tests or vaccines could not prove their health status. Their freedoms would therefore be de facto restricted.
Imagine, for example, the case of a pregnant woman who cannot be vaccinated and cannot pay for private COVID-19 tests – she can be excluded from a variety of locations and activities. Decades of progress in women’s rights can be reversed if governments do not think carefully before providing guidelines for the implementation of digital health passports.
A sticker on a vaccination certificate confirms receipt of a dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 ‘Comirnaty’ vaccine at the Bavarian Red Cross vaccination center in Pfaffenhofen an der Ilm, Germany [File: Andreas Gebert/Reuters]
Melinda Mills, director of the Leverhulme Center for Demographic Science at the University of Oxford: In order to support any introduction of a passport or vaccination certificate, it would be necessary to clarify the uses and who will be excluded if and when they are introduced.
We need to ask if it is something just for an international trip, to participate in a sporting event, to eat in a restaurant or as a condition of employment. It carries the risk of being used to discriminate unfairly when hiring or accessing certain locations or services.
Other concerns are whether vaccination data can be used for other unintended reasons. It is important to note that they will need to ensure that individuals are not prevented from accessing essential services or aggravate inequalities.
Altmann: [It is] a huge can of worms and extremely open to fraud and misbehavior … [There is also] great potential to create a vaccinated and unvaccinated layered society.
Al Jazeera: Would introducing vaccine passports exacerbate existing inequalities?
Chan: I think there is definitely a worrying possibility that vaccine passports will worsen social inequalities. For example, if vaccination rates are lower among disadvantaged communities, further limiting people’s access to society based on who has or has not been vaccinated will consolidate and exacerbate this disadvantage.
In addition, for people and groups who may have doubts about vaccination, for whatever reason, the use of the passport as an effective form of coercion can increase distrust and increase, rather than decrease, resistance. The issue of vaccination is already highly politicized – we have seen, with interventions such as wearing masks and even complying with the blocking restrictions themselves – how public health behaviors can quickly align with ideological differences and how these differences are widened and polarized all the more so because of the nature of the discussion, especially on social media.
Vaccine passports, by dividing the population into things we should and should not do, wants and desires, are likely to lead to even greater polarization and create deeper social divisions. At a time when collective action and solidarity are more important than ever, this is the last thing we need.
The introduction of vaccine passports may have adverse effects for minority communities already disproportionately affected by the pandemic COVID-19, experts warned. [File: John Sibley/Reuters]
Archard: You might as well do that. We know that the pandemic has disproportionately and adversely affected certain communities and social groups that are already at a disadvantage, such as, for example, black, Asian and ethnic minority communities (BAME). Access to the vaccine and the likely digital technologies that can be used – smartphones, most obviously – is uneven and harms these groups. At worst, a vaccine passport would stigmatize and leave those who cannot access them behind.
Al Jazeera: What benefits could the introduction of passports for COVID-19 vaccines bring?
Mills: If introduced clearly, they can allow more efficient international travel and savings to open up. However, if it were introduced, it would need an expiration date and even the possibility of being revoked if emerging variants compromise existing vaccines.
Archard: Most obviously, the benefits of vaccine passports are the restoration to some of those freedoms in society – work, social contact, travel – currently denied them; a guarantee of greater public security and protection against the harm of the virus; and the economic gains from allowing some to return to work.
The COVID-19 blockages had a major economic effect, with many commercial activities stalled [File: Nacho Doce/Reuters]
Altmann: If done in a strong, robust, intelligent way and in the context of universal access to vaccines, [the introduction of vaccine passports] it can really reopen our society safely. But the challenges to doing this well are enormous.
Chan: Some form of vaccination certification can be used to reduce risk and increase safety for those in high-exposure roles, such as health and social care, public transportation or education. However, the “passport” framework focuses on [an] individual rights and what the individual is entitled to do, instead of keeping others safe and on the collective benefits of vaccination as a public health measure. And I think this is the wrong focus.
Al Jazeera: Israel recently launched its version of a passport / vaccine certificate as part of an attempt to reopen the country’s economy. What do you think of this approach, and do you see other countries doing the same?
Altmann: I think it can work well there [in Israel] for many reasons. It is a sophisticated and medicalized society, where the Pfizer vaccine and uniform tests have been widely applied. In addition, as witnessed in its very successful testing and tracking [system], is a society where high-tech identification systems are accepted in a less tolerated way in a place like the United Kingdom.
Chan: One of the main questions here is about resources and opportunity costs. Israel is pursuing a strategy of rapid distribution of vaccines across the population to vaccinate as much of the population as possible, as well as, to some extent, the UK.
In such a situation, the usefulness of vaccine passports within the country may be limited, which means that the introduction of such a scheme would be a waste of resources. Consider that our goal is to implant the vaccine quickly, to reach the point where a sufficient population is vaccinated to prevent the spread of the disease; based on the current figures, we are doing very well in that direction. But once enough people are vaccinated, it will be even less useful to force everyone to carry proof of their individual vaccination status.
This being the case, if the government invests money in ordering a passport scheme which, if all goes well, will become obsolete within a year, it would be a waste of resources and divert attention away from other, more effective ways of tackling the pandemic and its broadest effects.
Israel has released a certificate validated by the government, known as the ‘Green Pass’, which allows people to prove that they have been vaccinated or recovered from COVID-19 and therefore have presumed immunity [File: Amir Cohen/Reuters]
Archard: Israel used the vaccine passport as a means of demanding vaccination effectively and this has risks and costs, such as eroding trust and being counterproductive – those who see a vaccine as enforced may well not want to receive it.
Not everyone in Israel has the same access to the vaccine and the government has been criticized for its treatment of the Palestinians. The government’s claim that those who do not have the vaccine “will be left behind” is also worrying. Other countries may introduce vaccine certificates, but do not take the same measures or [have the same] attitude like Israel.