Vaccine passport plan could save summer holidays
Summer holidays could be saved for Britons who’ve had their Covid jabs.
Greece, Spain and the Canary islands have all confirmed they are considering plans to spare tourists the need to quarantine – but only if they can prove they’ve been inoculated.
British officials are reportedly looking into ways that Britons could demonstrate they are protected against the virus with so-called ‘vaccine passports’.
‘People are desperate to get travelling again,’ said Brian Sutton, general secretary of the British airline Pilots association. ‘if a vaccine passport is what is needed, then we fully support it.’
Former health secretary Jeremy Hunt also backed the idea. ‘i think it is a very sensible policy and i know that the Government is looking at how that might work,’ he told the BBC.
Mr Hunt’s successor Matt Hancock insisted that vaccine passports were not a priority while virus cases remain high.
‘Of course, we’re constantly working with other countries and we keep these sorts of things under review,’ the Health Secretary said. ‘But for now there are still 31,670 people in hospital with Covid.’
elsewhere, the Greek government confirmed it was drawing up plans for vaccine passports, which could be in effect as soon as May.
in Spain, a spokesman for prime minister Pedro Sanchez confirmed the country was ‘considering the idea... in co-ordination with the Eu’, while a spokesman for the Canary islands’ regional government confirmed that vaccine passports were ‘something that we are considering and could come into force’. The archipelago plans to hold talks with the British ambassador to Spain within the next fortnight to discuss plans to accommodate holidaymakers.
The prospect of vaccine passports would not be without problems. Sir Jonathan Montgomery, professor of healthcare law at University College London, warned: ‘We don’t yet know very much about whether or not someone who is vaccinated is less likely to pass the virus onto somebody else. it might lull us into a false sense of security.
‘another concern is that until you get universal vaccination, creating privileges for some based on their vaccination status will create a divide in our society.’