It’s time to explore the need for Covid certification

As we face our second Easter under Covid restrictions and reflect on those we have lost to this malignant virus, we can take heart that better days are at hand.

In the UK, 31 million of us have had our first vaccinations. Positive tests, patients admitted to hospital and, most importantly, deaths from Covid are all falling.

But the virus is an implacable enemy against which we must always display discipline and vigilance. A third wave is now driving European Governments to embrace new lockdown measures. Around the world, rates of vaccination are much lower than the UK. While so many remain unvaccinated the virus continues to mutate into new variants which might undo all our good work.

Vaccination is a hugely powerful tool, but it can never provide 100 per cent protection. That is why we need to look at every option potentially available to ensure the fastest, safest and most sustainable road back to normality.

Which is where the idea of Covid certification could prove useful. In Israel, which is one of the few countries to have vaccinated a higher percentage of the population than we have in the UK, they have been using a “green pass” to get back to normal more quickly. This system allows citizens who’ve been vaccinated, recently recovered from the virus or who’ve had a recent negative test to congregate in venues which had been closed for months, such as theatres and nightclubs.

We can expect more countries to adopt similar tools and, indeed, other countries to require our own citizens to provide proof of their Covid status to travel and visit. So it’s imperative that we explore, with friends and allies, how such certificates should work. There are already requirements for health certification to visit some parts of the world, so there are precedents, but we need to proceed with care.

If we do accept that Covid certification is going to be required to travel abroad, the question then follows, can these certificates help in other ways? If Israel can accelerate its citizens’ returns to nightclubs, football stadiums and theatres with these certificates, might we?

We know that the virus spreads through social contact, and crowded venues which thrive on people mingling – like nightclubs – are the highest-risk locations for infection. But the risk of the virus being transmitted in any setting is lower if we reduce the chances of the people there being infectious, because they have received the vaccine, have immunity from recently having had the virus, or have recently had a reliable negative test.

Given the hit the night-time economy and the entertainment sector has taken over the past year, anything that might help businesses re-open sooner must be worth considering. That is why the Government proposes to pilot the use of certification criteria in a range of venues this month. Events that would have been closed to the public until much later this year will now be able to admit spectators who’ve been vaccinated or tested.

There are, of course, a host of practical and ethical questions we have to answer before we can consider a wider rollout. For health reasons, some people cannot be vaccinated, so we have to ensure access to certification through testing or natural immunity as an alternative. The Israeli approach involves a smartphone app and the NHS app could serve a similar purpose here. But we must not exclude those who do not have a smartphone, so we’re exploring paper-based complements to the app. Privacy and data security must be watertight.

These questions aren’t easy to resolve, but I don’t think we can duck them. At the moment, businesses could set up their own private certification schemes and use them to restrict access. Nightclubs and other venues already police entry. Some may well want to embrace any tool available to signal to visitors they are at low risk of infection. So we are looking closely at how we can guarantee fairness.

I believe there are some places you should never have to demonstrate your Covid status to access – essential services such as the supermarket, the chemist or the GP surgery. We need to ask where else it would be wrong to require certification. And also consider where certification could, fairly, allow us to relax social distancing faster.

That is why I want Telegraph readers and others to keep sharing their views on the way ahead. Certification will be an inevitability for international travel. It could be a valuable aid to opening up our domestic economy and society faster. Unless the Government takes a lead we risk others establishing the rules of the road. So where should the lines be drawn to help protect freedoms, respect privacy, promote equality and get us back to normality? And how can we ensure our approach is proportionate and time-limited?

Those are the questions we need to ask in the days ahead – and I know

Telegraph readers will help us find common-sense answers.