Passports to normality?
The good news on vaccines keeps on flowing, said Tom Whipple in The Times. In the latest wave, studies released this week showed that the UK’s inoculation programme is already reducing deaths, hospital admissions and the R number. Four weeks after a first dose, the Pfizer and AstraZeneca jabs cut hospital admissions by 85% and 94% respectively, according to research led by Public Health Scotland. There’s also evidence that the Pfizer jab “significantly cuts transmission” of Covid-19. But the success of the vaccine roll-out is beginning to raise some thorny questions, said the FT. Could employers follow through on threats to introduce “no jab, no job” hiring policies? Might travellers be issued with “vaccination passports” or certificates allowing them to prove they’ve been inoculated? Could such passes even be used to speed up the reopening of the economy here in Britain?
Vaccine certificates could yet be “our ticket to greater freedoms”, said the London Evening Standard. Along with mass testing, their introduction in Britain could accelerate the reopening of theatres, nightclubs and restaurants. But at what cost, asked Juliet Samuel in The Daily Telegraph. Sure, we can’t stop foreign countries demanding travellers show “vaccine passports” before being granted entry. But the idea that such passes should become a fixture of daily life at home is “ridiculous”. A person’s medical records are their own business, and should be treated with the sanctity afforded to “email inboxes and sexual preferences”. To be compelled to divulge their content in order to secure a job or enjoy basic freedoms would be unconscionable.
Boris Johnson has been quiet on the issue so far, said Andrew Grice in The Independent, promising only to conduct a review into the use of vaccine passes and passports. He knows such schemes would be viewed with deep scepticism and dislike by the many MPs in his own party with libertarian instincts, and he certainly doesn’t want to be accused of “making the vaccine compulsory by the back door”. But passes proving inoculation are already being rolled out elsewhere – Israel has started giving its vaccinated citizens “green passes” to allow them to return to normal life – and they are likely to be a crucial tool in unlocking foreign travel. “Like them or not, vaccine passports are coming.”