Covid vaccine passports in consideration

Public health officials and civil liberty organizations are urging policymakers to resist calls for coronavirus vaccine passports, at a time when many countries are in the process of reviewing whether to introduce digital passes.

The U.S., U.K. and European Union are among those considering whether to introduce a digital passport that will allow citizens to show they have been vaccinated against Covid-19.

The certificate system could be used for traveling abroad, as well as to grant access to venues such as restaurants and bars.

It is thought a digital passport could help stimulate an economic recovery as countries prepare to relax public health measures over the coming weeks. The ailing airline industry, hit particularly hard by the spread of the virus last year, is among those calling for governments to usher in legislation that supports Covid vaccine passports.

Physicians and rights groups, however, are deeply concerned.

Dr. Deepti Gurdasani, clinical epidemiologist at Queen Mary University of London, told CNBC via telephone that vaccine passports could inadvertently be used to provide “false assurances” to holidaymakers.

“I can see that they might be useful in the longer term, but I have several concerns about them being considered at this point in time when I think the scientific evidence doesn’t support them. And there are lots of ethical concerns about them that I think are legitimate,” Gurdasani said on Thursday.

Among those scientific concerns, Gurdasani said it is clear the protection coronavirus vaccines offer is “very far” from complete and “we know very little about the effectiveness of vaccines in preventing infection or even asymptomatic disease against several variants circulating in different countries.”

In addition, most countries do not have sufficient access to vaccines in order to immunize their populations, and Gurdasani warned a certificate system akin to vaccine passports would discriminate against those populations “even further.”