Vaccine passports not ruled out in Scotland as third of population gets dose

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has not ruled out the prospect of vaccine passports in Scotland, after a review into the measure was commissioned in England.

It comes as nearly a third of Scotland’s adult population – 1,465,241 people – have received a first dose of the vaccine. But figures announced by the First Minister recorded the lowest daily first dose son monday of any weekday since January 18.

Just 19,753 first doses were recorded, amid an expected drop in vaccine supply from Pfizer and a ramping up of second doses – with that daily figure at 5,861, by far the highest so far.

Announcing a route map out of lockdown for England on Monday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said vaccine certificates would be the subject of one of four studies conducted as part of easing of restrictions.

Asked about vaccine certificates yesterday when giving a statement to MSPS on Scotland’s route out of lockdown, Ms Sturgeon said she would not “close her mind” to the idea.

"There may be scope for vaccination giving you the ability to do certain things that without vaccination you might not be able to do,” she said.

Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Willie Rennie called for clarity on the idea. He raised concerns that vaccine pass ports may contribute to inequalities between those who have been able to get the vaccine and those who have not.

"In the past the First Minister was sceptical about vaccine passports,” he said. “Now she has left the door open for their use. I am concerned that vaccine passports are slowly gaining traction, but we don’t want a two-tier society which would exacerbate inequalities.”

Ms Sturgeon said the concept of vaccine pass ports“means different things” to different people, and the idea would need to be further considered. She said she would not support people being denied access to certain services because they had not had a vaccine.

"There are a lot of things we need to think through ,” she said.

"We need to firstly understand … exactly what vaccination gives you in terms of protection against getting or passing on the virus, and then we need to think about these ethical issues, about what is it reasonable to say can be accessed with a vaccine certificate and what isn’t.”

Mr Johnson yesterday said he has tasked the Chancellor of the duchy of lancaster michael Gove with over seeing an assessment of whether vaccine passports should be used. Speaking at a school in south london, the Prime minister suggested there was “a case for it”.

He said: “This is an area where we’re looking at a novelty for our country. We haven’t had stuff like this before, we’ve never thought in terms of having something that you have to show to go to a pub or a theatre.

“There are deep and complex issues that we need to explore, and ethical issues about what the role is for government in man dating or for people to have such a thing or indeed in banning from people doing such a thing. We can’t be discriminatory against people who for whatever reason people can’t have the vaccine. There might be medical reasons why people can’t have a vaccine.

“Or some people may generally refuse to have one, I think that’s mistaken. I think everybodyshould have a vaccine, but we need to thrash all this out. In the interval [during the rollout of the vaccines] what I want to see is a proper review into the issue.

“That’s going to be led by Michael Gove who will be getting the best scientific, moral, philosophical, ethical viewpoints on it and will work out a way forward. The fervent libertarianswill reject, but other people will think there’ s a case for it .”

Unveiling his roadmap on Monday, the Prime Minister had confirmed a study into vaccineand testing certificates will be one off our reviews conducted as he bids to ease restrictions.

It has been suggested that vaccine certificates or passports could open up the possibility of international travel, which is currently banned until at least May 17. The use of Covid status certificates could allow venues to deny access to those that can not provide evidence that they have either been vaccinated against coronavirus or tested negative for it.

Speaking yesterday, Mr Johnson claimed there was" no question" that for international travel a lot of countries would want vaccine passports.

He said :“they will be insisting on vaccine passport sin the way that people used to insist on evidence that you'd been inoculated against yellow fever, or whatever. so it' s going to come on the international stage, whatever.”

Earlier health secretary Matt Hancock had appeared to rule out the use of vaccine pass ports to access certain services.

Speaking to LBC Radio, he said: "There are some things where that might be OK, but there’s some areas where it definitely wouldn’t and so we’re going to have a review of that, consider all of those details, the ethics which is very, very important and challenging, and then come forward with a considered view."

Senior ministers had previously repeatedly dismissed the idea of introducing vaccine passports, with the UK Government’s vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi brandishing them “discriminatory”.

Meanwhile, the UK will use its presidency of the G7 to seek an international approach on the use of vaccine passports as part of the effort to restart global travel. A Number 10 spokesman said: "It's going to need an international consensus to be built on how to allow for greater foreign travel, and that's why we' re going to try and do that via the G7, and through other sort of multilateral discussions, because … it will be for different countries to determine their own regimes in relation to the quarantine and who they want to allow in, and we want to try and work together to get some sort of international framework."