Vaccine passports could worsen inequality but may be unavoidable, says WHO’s Europe director
Covid-19 vaccine passports may be unavoidable despite the risk of exacerbating inequalities, the World Health Organisation said.
Dr Hans Kluge, the WHO’s regional director for Europe, also raised concerns that vaccinated people could still spread the virus.
“The overarching concern, of course, is the access to the vaccines, whether we are going to exacerbate inequalities. That … has some ethical and legal issues,” he said.
The European Commission will propose how an EU-wide digital passport could work later this month. President Ursula von der Leyen said the document would allow people to travel across the bloc safely for work or tourism.
Dr Kluge said important considerations needed to be taken into account.
“The WHO does not recommend passports but I also believe that, as we see already, somehow they may be unavoidable. That’s why we are assessing the feasibility and desirability of such a requirement, taking into account what I call some caveats,” he said.
“First of all, from a scientific point of view, how long does a vaccine give immunity? It is not so clear yet.”
Dr Kluge said vaccination might not prevent transmission of the virus. “It’s not a watertight thing,” he said.
France and Germany said creating Covid passports would be unfair, given that only a small number of people have received two doses of a vaccine.
Dr Kluge said new Covid-19 cases were rising for the first time in six weeks in the WHO’s Europe region, which comprises 53 countries – 45 of which are vaccinating.
Meanwhile, the UAE reported 2,742 new cases of Covid-19 on Thursday, taking the total number of infections to 402,205.
There are 13,641 active cases. New infections have exceeded recoveries for a week now.
Officials said 1,691 people had recovered and the overall number of recoveries was 387,278.
Another 235,797 tests were carried out in the past 24 hours.
Another 17 deaths were recorded, pushing the number of fatalities to 1,286.