What the commentators said

The pace of Britain’s “stellar” vaccine roll-out is providing plenty of reasons for cheer, said Ian Birrell in the I newspaper. Infection and death rates are tumbling; evidence of the vaccines’ efficacy is mounting by the day, and uptake has been pretty high. Yet a significant section of society remains reluctant to get the jab. Some have fallen for conspiracy theories; others simply think the virus won’t affect them. The problem is especially acute among ethnic minorities, said Clare Foges in The Times. “Black people over the age of 80 in England are half as likely as their white peers” to have had the jab. Uptake among care workers is alarmingly low, too. The Queen has now taken the unusual step of urging refuseniks to “think about other people rather than themselves”, while ministers are planning a night-time vaccine drive in Ramadan next month to increase uptake in Muslim communities. But if such reasonable steps don’t work, we may yet have to rely on another solution: the introduction of “vaccine certificates”.

Some form of vaccine passport for foreign travel seems inevitable, said Stephen Glover in the Daily Mail: the EU has already proposed such a scheme, and Britain is likely to follow. But making vaccine certificates a condition for entry into pubs and restaurants at home wouldn’t be “so easy to swallow”. It’s an ethical minefield, said David Allen Green in the FT. Those who choose not to get the jab or are excluded on medical grounds risk being cut off from the jobs market, the provision of services, and even the right to travel freely. No one should be stopped from accessing essential public services, said Gaby Hinsliff in The Guardian. But “none of us has a divine right to go to the pub, get on a plane or go out for dinner”. A high level of vaccine uptake is vital if normal life is to resume. We’ve all made sacrifices this past year; “showing up for a jab is the final step in that process. Those who refuse the vaccine have the right to do so. But they can’t be surprised if the world moves on, in small but life-affirming ways, without them.”