Vaccine passports must become essential travel documents to restart international tourism.
The recommendation comes from the Global Tourism Crisis Committee, which met this week in Madrid to discuss measures to ensure the safe resumption of international travel. He called on international health and travel agencies to step up coordination of a standardized digital certification system, as well as harmonized testing protocols.
The meeting, organized by the World Tourism Organization (WTO), took place against a backdrop of growing cases of coronavirus and new strains of the virus, prompting the UK to close all travel corridors, to require all arrivals to the UK to enter quarantine and total ban on arrivals from South America and Portugal.
WTO Secretary-General Zurab Pololikashvili said: “The launch of vaccines is a step in the right direction, but the restart of tourism cannot wait. Vaccines should be part of a broader and more coordinated approach that includes certificates and passes for safe international travel. “
Dr. Richard Dawood, a travel medicine specialist at the Fleet Street Clinic in London, said proof of vaccination for travel is inevitable. “It won’t really be our choice – [vaccine passports] it will in fact be a requirement of each country to prove immunity. “
He said that existing international health regulations, for example, the requirement for a yellow fever certificate to enter certain countries, means that there is already a framework for a global approach. “Groundwork has been established.” The problem will be how to implement a secure system. “At the moment, people in the UK are given a piece of paper after being vaccinated. It is not exactly safe. There needs to be some fair consideration at some point about how we will keep vaccination records without overburdening the NHS. [For health passports to work] we need a way to authenticate vaccines. “
Some travel agencies have already made vaccines mandatory for travel. The Saga requires that cruise passengers have received both doses of the vaccine at least 14 days before departure. In November, Qantas chief Alan Joyce told Australia’s Nine Network that passengers would have to prove they were vaccinated before boarding a flight.
But some experts point out several obstacles to health passports, including the existence of different vaccines with different levels of effectiveness, how long immunity lasts and whether vaccinated people can still spread the virus to others. And not all travel agencies support the idea of vaccine certificates.
The World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC) classified them as discriminatory. “We are in the initial stage of implementing the vaccine. If you make vaccines mandatory, it means that many people will not be able to fly, even if they are free from Covid, ”said a WTTC spokesman. “It is much better to have a test and release scheme that travelers test before traveling to prove they don’t have Covid.”
He added that Covid’s lack of international coordination on security is a major obstacle to restarting travel and increasing consumer confidence. “There is a crazy pavement of rules and regulations that most people find so difficult to navigate that it is undermining the urge to travel.”
Confusing messages from the UK government are also frustrating travel companies. Derek Moore, of the Association of Independent Tour Operators, said the government was “firing wildly in all directions, leaving the carnage behind.”
“At the moment, vaccination is well underway and appears to be very successful. Our clients seem to understand better than ministers; our clients (many over 50) know that they will soon be vaccinated for self-protection. “
Moore said comments made earlier this week by Secretary of Health Matt Hancock and Secretary of Foreign Affairs Dominic Raab, warning against the rush to book holidays abroad this summer, were “scaring people and putting them off unnecessarily.”
Some travel agencies reported a keen interest in travel abroad, despite tight border controls and warnings from ministers. But Moore pointed out that this “increase” in reserves came from a position of no reserves. “There are still a lot of people who don’t want to book. And comments by ministers like Preeti Patel saying ‘it’s too early to speculate on travel restrictions’ are not helping. “
Last year was the worst year on record for tourism. The WTO predicts that international tourist arrivals in 2020 fell by 70-75%, or a billion less arrivals, resulting in an economic loss of $ 2 trillion in world GDP.