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Are vaccine passports on the way? It certainly seems likely and while they may be a few monnths away, it does seem inevitable that some class of system will be in place to allow people who have been fully vaccinated against Covid-19 to travel without the need for quarantines and PCR tests and other restrictions.
And will they be the answer to all our travel woes? No, but they may form at least part of the solution and allow the growing number of people who have been vaccinated against Covid-19 travel overseas while simultaneously allowing people from overseas who have been vaccinated come to Ireland on their holidays in the months ahead.
But what exactly will they involve? It is still too early to say, as multiple options are being considered by the authorities here, at an EU level, and across the world. Health and technology groups internationally have been working to create a digital vaccination passport on the basis that governments, airlines and other businesses may soon insist on proof of vaccination.
Are we far along that road? We are pretty far. Right now the International Air Transport Association is trialing a digital passport which is linked to electronic passenger information and allows the border authorities to check if a passenger has been vaccinated.
Then there is the Vaccination Credential Initiative, a coalition of organisations including Microsoft, Oracle and the US healthcare non-profit Mayo Clinic which is working to establish standards to verify if a person has had a vaccine and to stop people falsely claiming to be protected against the disease.
That comes on the back of the not-for-profit Commons Project, set up to develop a widely accepted digital cert to allow travellers show they have tested negative for Covid-19.
“Individuals are going to need to have to produce vaccination records for a lot of aspects of getting back to life as normal,” the chief executive of The Commons Project Paul Meyer said. “We live in a globally connected world. We used to anyway - and we hope to again.”
How will such a system work? That depends, as countries are most likely going to want to set their own rules. It is probably safe to assume that the systems will see individuals have their vaccination records in a digital wallet or on a paper QR code which they can show to people as required.
Why are these vaccine passports being considered? Because countries, businesses and the general public are anxious to see things return to the way they were as soon as possible. If Country A if progressing fast with a vaccination programme it is entirely understandable for it to want to open up to visitors who have been vaccinated and are less likely to fall ill in their country, burdening their health service. There may also be a reduced threat when it comes to transmission of the infection.
Is there science to back that up? There is certainly a growing body of evidence to suggest that vaccinated people are considerably less likely to fall ill with the disease. There is still no real clarity on whether or not a person who has been vaccinated can pass the infection on to others and that remains a big question hanging over vaccine passports.
What is our Government saying? Well, Health Minister Stephen Donnelly has said the Government has been examining proposals. “Some of the airlines have already floated the idea that you would need one of these vaccination certificates in order to fly,” he said. “The answer to how exactly they might be used depends on how the vaccines perform in terms of things like transmissibility. When we have recommendations from the experts on the appropriate use of it, then we can decide what’s the easiest and most secure thing to do, in terms of is it paper-based or card-based, for example like our drivers licence, or is it a digital certificate that you might have to submit to an airline before being able to book a flight.”
What is happening in the UK? There are conflicting views there. Last week for instance, its vaccine minister Nadhim Zahawi said vaccination passports were “discriminatory” but then last weekend the British foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, said they were “under consideration”. Other ministers have been more bullish about them.
And in the EU? The president of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen has said she supports a common EU-established vaccination certificate: “We have to have a medical requirement that proves that people have been vaccinate.”
Are there many question marks about such a system? There are. Quite apart from the absence of hard data province that vaccines can stop transmission, there are concerns over how vaccines will respond to variants, notably at present, the South African and Brazilian variants.
Anything else? Yes. There are issues of fairness and privacy. In Ireland and many other countries people are being vaccinated based on set criteria. In this country, that means older and more vulnerable people as well as front line health workers are being vaccinated before younger cohorts. While such a policy makes sense from a public health perspective – given the nature of this disease and who it hits hardest – it does mean younger, healthier people will be at the end of the queue and will be denied opportunities to travel and to work overseas that others may have access to.
And what are the privacy concerns? While the European Commission has said any vaccination certification programme will be “in full compliance with EU data protection law” it is inevitable that many people will have concerns that any system that insists on vaccines for international travel are a gross intrusion into their privacy. And it is pretty certain that big tech’s involvement in developing vaccine passport systems is going to alarm some people,
Are there answer to these concerns? Well, the companies developing such passports for the UK, biometrics company iProov and cyber security firm Mvine, have said privacy fears are being overstated. Their vaccine pass system is being tested by the NHS and iProov founder and chief executive Andrew Bud said they only really need to hold two pieces of information. Has the person been vaccinated and what do they look like.
But vaccination passports are not new? Not really. There are many countries which insist on proof of vaccination for a range of different diseases. Many people will be familiar with the little yellow vaccination booklet detailing inoculations which is an entry requirement for some countries. Anyone looking to travel to parts of Africa, for example, has to prove they have been vaccinated against yellow fever before they are allowed to board planes and the rules are rigidly enforced.
Are people preparing to use vaccination passports? Yes and no. According to recent research carried out by Tourism Ireland in multiple markets including the US, Britain, German and France, the majority of holidaymakers expected vaccinations to be a mandatory requirement for travel within Europe in the future.
And are they happy about it? It is fair to say support is not universal. All told 75 per cent of Americans think it is a good idea while 68 per cent of Britons are of the same mind. The percentage of Germans who support the notion of vaccine passports falls to 46 per cent and to 42 per cent among French people. The Tourism Ireland research suggests that a further 31 per cent of French people think the idea of mandatory vaccinations for travel purposes is a poor idea.
Will it have an impact on the domestic tourism market? It might, but it does depend on where the tourists are coming from. Tourism Ireland has also looked at the attitude to vaccines across several markets. A majority of people in Britain and the United States are keen to take the vaccine as soon as they become available to them while Germans are “cautiously positive” about the vaccine. “In France, fewer than half intended to get vaccinated and only a fifth said that they would get vaccinated as soon as they were offered the opportunity,” the researchers found.
Are vaccination passports being rolled out elsewhere? Iceland was the first European country to give vaccination certs to citizens who had been given two doses of the vaccine last month. It also recognises similar certs issued from other EU countries. Denmark and Sweden are rolling them out too while Spain is keen. “Vaccine certification is something we are going towards inevitably,” said Foreign Minister Arancha Gonzalez. “It will be a very important element to guarantee a safe return to mobility.”
This week, Greece, Cyprus and Israel reached a deal allowing  citizens with Covid-19 vaccination certs to move freely between the three countries. The agreement is being considered as a possible first step towards resuming tourism in the months ahead. “I expect what we will be doing with Israel to be a trial run of what we can do with other countries,” said Greek prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who first mooted  the idea of vaccine passports with other EU members last month.
Portugal’s Interior Minister Eduardo Cabrita has said vaccine certification will be easier to manage than current Covid-19 requirements and should “act as proof of security and do away with certain requirements at borders - in particular, the requirement for PCR tests.”