Dr. Anthony Fauci said on Monday that the United States government will not require Americans to use vaccine passports to prove that they have been immunized against the coronavirus.
The director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases said that the federal government “can be involved in ensuring that things are done in a fair and equitable manner”.
“But I doubt that the federal government is the main element of this,” Fauci told the podcast “Politico Dispatch”.
Fauci said he expected certain companies and educational institutions to be responsible for creating their own vaccination policies.
“I am not saying that they should or would, but I am saying that you could predict how an independent entity could say, ‘Well, we cannot deal with you unless we know that you are vaccinated.’ But it will not be mandated by the federal government, ”he said.
Andy Slavitt, a senior adviser on the White House COVID-19 response team, also said earlier that the Biden administration is only providing guidance to the private sector on how to develop so-called passports.
“The government does not see its role as the place to create a passport, nor as a place to store citizens’ data. We see this as something that the private sector is doing and we will do what is important to us, ”he said at a news conference.
“And we are leading an interagency process now to examine these details and to ensure that some important criteria are met with these credentials. No. 1 that there is equitable access. This means whether or not people have access to technology or not, ”he added.