New technology could help make vaccine passports our ticket to freedom

A chaotic patchwork of rules will be created unless the Government takes a lead, says Daniel Capurro

Holding a QR code up to a scanner is second nature to many. From digital boarding passes to proof of purchase, they have become ubiquitous in an increasingly paperless world. So it requires no great leap of the imagination to picture the British beeping into stadiums and pubs with a little black and white square proving they’ve had the Covid-19 jabs. Are vaccine certificates the solution to restarting the hospitality and entertainment industries?

Perhaps the first question is when exactly to introduce them. The first option would be as soon as possible, but this would create a scenario in which only a slice of society would have access to reopened services.

“If we were going to introduce this tomorrow, which isn’t the plan, you’d exclude everyone 65 and under,” says Melinda Mills, a lead author of a Royal Society report on the criteria vaccine passports would need to meet. Such a move would be ethically dubious and “not particularly handy, due to excluding age and other groups, for the economy”, she says. But the more likely option of waiting until everyone eligible has been offered a jab still leaves problems. Because vaccine hesitancy is highest among certain ethnic minorities, certificates would “exclude an already disadvantaged group and one that’s a large proportion of essential workers,” says Prof Mills.

And then you get those excluded for medical reasons, including pregnant women and the immunocompromised, and refuseniks for religious and political reasons. Children are another problem. In Israel, where the worldleading pace of vaccination has slowed, passports given to those who have received two vaccine doses, have been proposed to increase uptake. “Decide whether you are part of the celebration or whether you will be left behind,” said Health Minister Yuli Edelstein.

Yet whether such a programme would work is far from clear. “Where there are uptake issues, these seem to be related as much to wider questions of access to the vaccination and of social exclusion more generally than to vaccine hesitancy,” says Nottingham Trent University’s Robert Dingwall.

“A vaccine passport is a sanction rather than an incentive,” he adds. To make vaccine certificates work among

communities with low uptake would require the same kind of careful communication efforts that were necessary to boost vaccine uptake.

It’s the kind of work Israel has had to undertake to combat misinformation and vaccine hesitancy among the Orthodox Jewish. Without it, says Prof Mills, certificates risk playing into the same problems that vaccines face.

Among the reasons for low uptake in certain communities are, she says, a lack of trust and “a history of problems dealing with medical authorities and issues like the Windrush scandal”. Waiting until the majority have been inoculated also raises questions about whether vaccination certificates are of much value anyway. “In a vaccinated population, they do not actually convey any information that is helpful,” argues Prof Dingwall.

Leaving the issue unresolved is not a solution. While the state may not wish to discriminate against ethnic minorities, private businesses will face pressure to keep employees and customers safe. Which side the law would come down on is not yet clear.

A business-led approach would also raise practical questions. Without clarity from the Government, the onus may fall on individual employees, says Prof Mills, “and that’s unfair on the

‘The state may not wish to discriminate against ethnic minorities’

person at the door who has to say ‘no I’m not serving you’.”

Not that banning requirements outright would be clear cut either. While vaccine uptake is generally good in the UK, it’s low among care home staff. Should vaccines be mandatory for medical and care workers? As Prof Chris Whitty, the Chief Medical Officer, pointed out, surgeons are required to have a hepatitis B vaccine.

There are technical questions too. Where would passports apply? Will they be safe, secure and counterfeitproof? Will they expire if immunity fades? Could they be revoked if a vaccine-resistant variant emerges?