What role can vaccine licenses play in the pandemic? | News pandemic coronavirus

After months of costly closures, closed borders and reduced personal freedom, the concept of a vaccine passport is gaining traction with governments that want to plan their path through the next phase of the COVID-19 pandemic.

A number of countries, including China and Israel, have apparently issued their own types of certification with a view to reducing future international travel or reviving activity in hard-hit sectors of economies, such as hospitality.

Several others are measuring whether they should follow suit and accept the idea of ​​documentation for those who received the novel vaccine against the coronavirus.

At the same time, skeptics warn that there is still a wide-ranging potential negative impact.

Here’s what you need to know:

What is a vaccine passport?

Vaccine consent can be broadly defined as a piece of documentation that proves that someone has been exposed to a virus – in this case, SARS-CoV-2, also known as the novel coronavirus.

It could be in the form of a signed and stamped certificate or a Quick Response (QR) code stored on a smartphone.

Israel has issued a government-certified certificate, known as the ‘Green Pass’, which allows people to prove that they have been vaccinated or recovered from COVID-19 [File: Jack Guez/AFP]

The documents may be required for a range of activities from international travel to access to theaters and restaurants, Dave Archard, chairman of the UK Nuffield Council on Biology, told Al Jazeera.

Proof of vaccination could become a “discriminatory” employment condition, he warned, or lead to a “two-tier society” in which people need documents to exercise some social freedom, such as access to public places or travel. within countries.

Why are they talked about?

With major COVID-19 vaccination campaigns progressing rapidly in several countries, vaccine licensing has emerged as a tool that could reopen borders for international travel and encourage regions economic which is undermined by strict locking restrictions.

In theory, the ability to test vaccines could reveal a turning point in the pandemic, allowing countries to welcome visitors to en masse vaccines and hard industries – especially those that are working in hospitality – to start trading again without fear of the virus.

In reality, however, there are still questions about how such documents would work in practice and raise concerns about their potential to exacerbate inequality, erode mysteries, and perhaps even thwarting efforts to curb COVID-19.

Where, and how, are they used?

Several countries have already issued their own versions of passports or vaccine certificates, despite the lack of global consensus on their use.

Israel, for example, has issued a government-certified certificate, called the Green Pass, which allows people to prove that the vaccine has been obtained or recovered from COVID-19, and so they have proven immunity.

The passports, which can be printed out or stored on a smartphone, are valid for six months from the time they received the full vaccine. They allow guards to engage in an unrestricted range of activities such as going to the gym, eating in restaurants or attending a theater concert, although there are some restrictions.

The certificate could also allow guards to travel abroad and circumvent quarantine requirements. Israel has already signed an agreement with Greece and Cyprus that will allow citizens with COVID-19 vaccine certificates to travel without permission between the three countries.

Consideration was given to encouraging vaccine licensing to the international distribution of COVID-19 vaccines [File: Kim Hong-Ji/Reuters]

China, too, has introduced its own form of vaccine passport in the form of a certificate showing a person’s vaccine status and COVID-19 test results.

It is intended to be a digital product but is also available in paper format and is being distributed “to help promote global economic recovery and enable cross-border travel”, according to a foreign ministry. of the country.

Bahrain has launched a similar product, while Denmark and Sweden are ready to roll out their own certification schemes. The European Union is considering a full-block digital certificate providing proof of vaccination, which could travel for Europeans in the warmer months to come.

What are the benefits and risks?

Vaccine passport applicants argue that they can be used to help recover international travel safely and to unlock frozen economies.

Effectively, by confirming that someone has been vaccinated or recovered from COVID-19, vaccine licenses in theory indicate that an individual is not infected with or in contact with the virus. the danger from itself.

“They say, you’re no longer a danger, and that gives you special rights that you wouldn’t have if you were in danger.” So getting a vaccine passport makes sense from the that vision, ”Joseph Stiglitz, a US Nobel laureate economist, told Al Jazeera.

“But if we can’t make sure vaccines are available to everyone, it will lead to significant inequalities.”

Stiglitz ‘s caveat is one of the strongest concerns raised by those who are skeptical about a vaccine passport – namely that the different global inequality in access to doses means that the issuance of any certificate there will be unfair discrimination against these people in countries with less vaccine supply.

Even if doses are available more evenly on a global scale, the range of vaccines currently in use, and their varying levels of efficacy, at the same time reduce the expectation that create any kind of uniform certification, Danny Altmann, professor of immunology at Imperial College London, told Al Jazeera.

“We have billions of people who have not had different access to vaccines, or vaccines in different countries that have completely different immunity and [have been] test in experiments of antibodies that are quite different. How can this be made one size fits all international documentation systems? ”He said.

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