After months of costly shutdowns, closed borders and restricted personal freedoms, the concept of vaccine passports is gaining traction with governments eager to chart their way through the next phase of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Several countries, including China and Israel, have already launched their own forms of certification with the ostensible intention of facilitating future international travel or reviving activity in hard-hit sectors of the economy, such as hospitality.
Several others are considering whether to follow suit and embrace the idea of documentation for those who have been vaccinated against the new coronavirus.
Skeptics, in turn, warn that a number of possible comprehensive adverse effects still need to be addressed.
Here’s what you need to know:
What is a vaccine passport?
A vaccine passport can be broadly defined as a piece of documentation that proves someone has been inoculated against a virus – in this case, SARS-CoV-2, also known as the new coronavirus.
It can take the form of a signed and stamped certificate or a quick response code (QR) stored on a smartphone.
Israel has released a government-validated certificate, known as the ‘Green Pass’, through which people can prove that they have been vaccinated or recovered from COVID-19 [File: Jack Guez/AFP]
Documents may be needed for a range of activities, from international travel to access to theaters and restaurants, Dave Archard, chairman of the UK’s Nuffield Council on Bioethics, told Al Jazeera.
Proof of vaccination can also become a “discriminatory” condition of employment, he warned, or lead to a “two-tier society” in which people need documentation to exercise certain social freedoms, such as accessing public spaces or traveling internally within countries.
Why are they being discussed?
With the mass vaccination of COVID-19 advancing at a rapid pace in several countries, vaccine passports have gained prominence as a potential tool to safely re-open borders for international travel and boost economic sectors devastated by strict blocking restrictions.
In theory, the ability to show proof of vaccination could represent a turning point in the pandemic, allowing countries to receive mass vaccinated visitors and hard-hit companies – especially those operating in the hospitality sector – to resume trade without fear of the virus.
In reality, however, there are outstanding questions about how such documents would work in practice and urgent concerns about their potential to exacerbate inequalities, erode privacies and possibly even hamper efforts to contain COVID-19.
Where and how are they being used?
Several countries have already launched their own versions of passports or vaccine certificates, despite the lack of global consensus on their use.
Israel, for example, has released a government-validated certificate, known as the Green Pass, that allows people to show evidence that they have been vaccinated or recovered from COVID-19 and therefore have presumed immunity.
Passes, which can be printed or stored on a smartphone, are valid for six months from the time of full vaccination. They allow holders to participate in a series of restricted activities, such as going to the gym, dining in restaurants or attending a theater performance, albeit with certain limits.
The certificate can also allow cardholders to travel abroad and bypass quarantine requirements. Israel has already signed an agreement with Greece and Cyprus that allows citizens with COVID-19 vaccination certificates to travel unimpeded between the three countries.
The discussion on vaccine passports spurred the international launch of COVID-19 vaccines [File: Kim Hong-Ji/Reuters]
China has also introduced its own form of vaccine passport in the form of a certificate showing a person’s vaccination status and the results of the COVID-19 test.
It was conceived as a digital product, but it is also available on paper and is being launched “to help promote global economic recovery and facilitate international travel”, according to the country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Bahrain has launched a similar product, while Denmark and Sweden are preparing to launch their own certification schemes. The European Union is considering a digital certificate for the entire bloc that provides proof of vaccination, which could facilitate Europeans’ travel in the coming warmer months.
What are the benefits and risks?
Proponents of vaccine passports argue that they can be used to help safely resume mass international travel and unlock frozen economies.
Indeed, when proving that someone has been vaccinated or recovered from COVID-19, vaccine passports, in theory, signal that an individual is not a potential vector for the virus or is at risk of having it.
“They say, you are no longer a danger, and that gives you certain privileges that you would not have had if you were a danger. So having vaccine passports makes sense from that perspective, ”Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz told Al Jazeera.
“But, unless we can guarantee that there is access to vaccines for everyone, this presents an important inequality.”
Stiglitz’s warning is one of the most pressing concerns raised by skeptics about vaccine passports – that is, that the huge global inequality in access to doses means that any certification implementation, in turn, would unfairly discriminate against people in nations with fewer vaccine supplies.
Even though doses become more uniformly available on a global scale, the current range of vaccines in use and their different efficacy rates reduce the prospect of any type of uniform certification being created, Danny Altmann, professor of immunology at Imperial College London, told Al Jazeera.
“We have billions of people who, variably, have not had access to any vaccine, or vaccines in different countries with very different immunogenicity and [have been] tested in markedly different antibody tests. How can this make a single size for all international documentation systems? ” he said.