Vaccine ‘passports’ may open society but worsen inequities
TEL AVIV, Israel — Violet light bathed the club stage as 300 people, masked and socially distanced, erupted in gentle applause. For the first time since the pandemic began, Israeli musician Aviv Geffen stepped to his electric piano and began to play for an audience seated right in front of him.
“A miracle is happening here tonight,” Geffen told the crowd.
Still, the reanimating experience Monday night above a shopping mall north of Tel Aviv was not accessible to everyone. Only people displaying a “green passport” that proved they had been vaccinated or had recovered from COVID-19 could get in.
The highly controlled concert offered a glimpse of a future that many are longing for after months of COVID-19 restrictions. Governments say getting vaccinated and having proper documentation will smooth the way to travel, entertainment and other social gatherings in a post-pandemic world.
Inside Israel, green passports or badges obtained through an app is the coin of the realm. The country recently reached agreements with Greece and Cyprus to recognize each other’s green badges, and more such tourism-boosting accords are expected.
Anyone unwilling or unable to get the jabs that confer immunity will be “left behind,” said Health Minister Yuli Edelstein.
“It’s really the only way forward at the moment,” Geffen said in an interview.
“People can’t live their lives in the new world without them,” he said. “We must take the vaccines. We must.”
The vaccine is not available to everyone in the world, whether due to supply or cost. And some people don’t want it, for religious or other reasons. In Israel, a country of 9.3 million people, only about half the adult population has received the required two doses.
The government is appealing to the emotional longing for the company of others — in Israel’s storied outdoor markets, at concerts such as Geffen’s, and elsewhere.
“With the Green Pass, doors just open for you. You could go out to restaurants, work out at the gym, see a show,” read an announcement on Feb. 21, the day much of the economy reopened after a six-week shutdown.
Then it raised a question at the center of the global quest to conquer the pandemic that has hobbled economies and killed more than 2.5 million people:
“How to get the pass? Go and get vaccinated right now.”
It’s that simple in Israel, which has enough vaccine to inoculate everyone over 16.
The British government said it is studying the possibility of issuing some kind of “COVID status certification” that could be used by employers and organizers of large events as it prepares to ease lockdown restrictions this year.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the policy could cause problems.
“We can’t be discriminatory against people who, for whatever reason, can’t have the vaccine,” he said.
Many countries around Europe are scrambling to develop their own vaccine certification systems to help revive summer travel, generating a risk that different systems won’t work properly across the continent’s borders.
“I think there is huge potential for not working well together,” said Andrew Bud, CEO of facial biometrics company iProov, which is testing its digital vaccination passport technology within the U.K.’s National Health Service.
But the technical knots around vaccine passports may be the easier ones to solve, he said.
The bigger challenges “are principally ethical, social, political and legal. How to balance the fundamental rights of citizens … with the benefits to society.”