The expectation is that with a vaccine for COVID-19 being rolled out, life will begin to return to normal – especially when it comes to travel which has been particularly hard-hit.
A ‘vaccine passport’ or ‘e-vaccination certification of compliance for border crossing regulations’ may become a required travel document to enable seamless border-crossing and harmonization of national laws.
But there are important issues to understand, such as whether vaccinations rule out the potential for transmission, evidence of inoculation versus evidence of immunity, and the rights of people who may be unable to have the vaccine for health or other reasons.
This short video explainer with Professor David Heymann and Professor David Salisbury examines the following key questions:
- What are vaccine passports or certificates?
- What do vaccine passports allow you to do?
- What other diseases have vaccine passports been used for?
- Have vaccine passports stopped the spread of other diseases?
- What are the advantages of vaccine passports?
- What are the drawbacks of vaccine passports?
- If someone is double-vaccinated, are they less at risk from international travel?
- Will all vaccines be treated equally under a passport scheme?
- How do new variant strains affect the validity of vaccine passports?
- If new variants render a vaccine ineffective, is there still any value in a vaccine passport?
- Can a vaccine passport be useful for reasons other than international travel?
- Are there examples where it would not be appropriate to insist on proof of vaccination?
- Are there any prospects of an international agreement on vaccine passports?