HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) – Vaccine passports in development to check the immunization status of COVID-19 and allow inoculated people to travel, shop and dine more freely have become the last ignition point in the perpetual political wars of the America, with Republicans portraying them as heavy people manual intrusion into personal freedom and private health choices.
They currently exist in only one state – a limited government partnership in New York with a private company – but that hasn’t stopped Republican lawmakers in a handful of states from making legislative proposals to ban their use.
The debate over whether passports are a sensible response to the pandemic or government exaggeration echoes last year’s bitter disputes over masks, closing orders and even vaccines themselves.
Typically, vaccine passports are an application with a code that checks whether someone has been vaccinated or recently tested negative for COVID-19. They are in use in Israel and developing countries in Europe, seen as a way to safely help rebuild the pandemic-ravaged travel industry.
They are intended to allow companies to open more safely as the vaccination campaign gains momentum and reflect measures already in place for schools and trips abroad that require proof of immunization against various diseases.
But lawmakers across the country are already opposed to the idea. Republican Party senators in Pennsylvania are drafting legislation that would prohibit vaccine passports, also known as health certificates or travel passes, from being used to prevent people from routine activities.
“We have constitutional rights and health privacy laws for a reason,” said Pennsylvania House majority leader Kerry Benninghoff, a Republican. “They should not cease to exist in times of crisis. These passports can start with COVID-19, but where will they end? “
Benninghoff said this week that his concern was “using taxpayer money to generate a system that will now, possibly, be in the hands of megatechnology organizations that have already had problems getting hacked and security issues.”
A Democratic colleague, Congressman Chris Rabb of Philadelphia, sees value in vaccine passports if they are implemented carefully.
“There is a function to use technology and other means to confirm people’s status,” said Rabb. “But we have concerns about privacy, surveillance and unequal access.”
Republican lawmakers in other states are also working on proposals to ban or limit them. A bill presented to the Arkansas Legislative Assembly on Wednesday would prevent government officials from requiring vaccine passports for any reason and would prohibit its use as a condition of “entry, travel, education, employment or services”.
The sponsor, Republican state senator Trent Garner, called vaccine passports “just another example of the Biden administration using COVID-19 to impose regulations or restrictions on ordinary Americans.”
President Joe Biden’s administration has largely taken an indirect approach to vaccine passports.
At a news conference this week, Andy Slavitt, interim administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said he considered them a project for the private sector, not the government.
He said the government is considering federal guidelines to guide the process around vaccine passports. Among his concerns: Not everyone who needs a passport has a smartphone; passports must be free and in multiple languages; and private health information must be protected.
“There will be organizations that want to use this. There will be organizations that don’t want to use this, ”said Dr. Brian Anderson of Miter, who operates federally funded research centers and is part of a coalition working to develop standards for vaccine certifications to facilitate their use among suppliers. .
Anderson noted that the Vaccination Credential Initiative is not making recommendations on how – or even if – organizations choose to use certifications.
In Montana, Republican Party lawmakers voted this week along with party lines to introduce a pair of bills that would ban discrimination based on vaccine status or possession of an immunity passport, and ban the use of vaccine status. or passports to obtain certain benefits and services.
And a freshman Republican state legislator in Ohio spoke about the concept, saying that more restrictions or mandates are not the answer to all of COVID-19’s problems.
“Ohio residents are encouraged to get the COVID-19 vaccine for the health and well-being of themselves and others,” said Representative Al Cutrona. “However, a vaccine should not be determined or required by our government in order for our people to integrate back into a sense of normalcy.”
Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis on Friday issued an executive order saying that no government entity can issue a vaccine passport, and companies in that state cannot demand it. He said he expects the legislature to pass a similar law.
His request said that requiring “so-called passports for the COVID-19 vaccine to participate in everyday life – such as attending a sporting event, attending a restaurant or going to the cinema – would create two classes of citizens”.
US Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Georgia, a newly elected member who embraced and promoted a range of far-right political positions, told her Facebook supporters earlier this week that “something called a vaccine passport” was a form of “corporate communism” and part of a democratic effort to control people’s lives.
And a Republican party legislator in Louisiana has drafted a bill to prevent the state from including any vaccination information on Louisiana’s driver’s license or to make issuing a driver’s license subject to vaccine status.
In New York, a government-sponsored vaccine passport called the Excelsior Pass is being launched. A smartphone app that shows whether someone has been vaccinated or recently tested negative for COVID-19.
Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo has publicized the idea of allowing an event organizer, for example, to use his own smartphone to scan the code for a concert.
New York officials have not released specific details about how the app will work, access someone’s vaccination or test status, or protect a user’s name, date of birth or the location where their code was read. The application’s privacy policy says that the data will be “kept securely” and will not be used for sales or marketing purposes or shared with third parties. But some privacy experts say the public needs more details to ensure that their information is protected.
Albert Fox Cahn, founder and executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project at the Urban Justice Center, a New York-based civil rights and privacy group, warned that the Excelsior Pass creates a new layer of surveillance without sufficient details about how it collects data or protect privacy.
“Basically, we only have screenshots of the user interface and not much else,” said Cahn of the Excelsior Pass.
___
Associated Press writers Andrew Welsh-Huggins in Columbus, Ohio; Marina Villeneuve in Albany, New York; Candice Choi in New York; Andrew DeMillo in Little Rock, Arkansas; Amy Beth Hanson in Helena, Montana; and Melinda Deslatte in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, contributed.