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While Indians hope they can resume international travel soon, the country has remained firm on its stance against the idea of Covid-19 vaccine passports.
India had opposed the idea of common vaccine passports at the G7 meeting in June on the grounds that countries have unequal access to vaccine doses. This inequality may well have an impact on low- and middle-income countries, which have vaccinated much smaller proportions of their population compared to developed countries.
South Asian countries, for example, have vaccinated less than 20% of their population compared to countries like UK, US and Canada which covered over 50% of their population.
While some regions are testing a common vaccination pass, such as the EU’s Green Pass for its citizens, and some organizations in the US have made vaccination certificates mandatory for returning to work in the office, there is no global consensus on a common vaccine passport.
So, despite a conversation about the idea of a common travel document, Covid-19 vaccine passports may never become truly universal.
Covid-19 vaccine passports and inequalities
“Many ethical issues have been raised with the use of passports: there is inequitable access to vaccines across regions, countries and within a country and priority groups”, Sarin KC, health economist and associate project at the Health Intervention and Technology Assessment Program (HITAP), Quartz said. HITAP is a semi-autonomous research organization under the Thai Ministry of Public Health.
Currently, countries accepting fully vaccinated travelers comply with the government certificate issued in their respective countries. Checking these documents takes longer, creating bottlenecks at airports. A vaccination passport can be ideal in terms of the standardization it offers. For example, IBM’s digital health pass, which uses blockchain technology and allows travelers to receive a QR code by email to display at the airport, could prove beneficial for travelers and airlines.
But it can have its own problems. “Inequalities can also arise if these passports are digital and people do not have access to these technologies,” he added. Such disparities already exist in terms of who can travel now and where, “but the gap can widen when vaccine passports are used for domestic travel or to enter community events, restaurants, studies or even to find a job, “Sarin KC mentioned.
The World Health Organization (WHO), too, is currently of the opinion that vaccine passports are not the direction to take in terms of managing Covid-19. “We have long advised against the use of covid vaccination passports for international travel due to the inequitable availability and the need for strong evidence for the prevention of transmission of the virus after vaccination. We have released the latest interim guidance to all Member States, ”WHO Chief Scientist Soumya Swaminathan told the Mint on July 20.
In addition, vaccine passports may or may not be effective in containing the pandemic.
Varying efficacy of vaccines
The fact that different Covid-19 vaccines – mRNA, adenoviral vector, or inactivated virus – have different levels of effectiveness also complicates the idea of a common passport. Not only that, with newer variants such as alpha (first discovered in the UK) and delta (from India), the vaccines have shown reduced efficacy. In countries like the United States and Iceland, for example, the delta variant has also infected vaccinated people, although the vaccines have significantly reduced the number of hospitalizations and deaths.
Compare that to the yellow fever vaccine, of which there is only one variant available and which provides lifelong protection. But the Covid-19 vaccines are not in such a “comfortable” place, Christopher Dye, an epidemiologist at the University of Oxford, told the BBC.
In such a scenario, vaccine passports for Covid-19 are not ideal public health tools. “Having a vaccination passport does not guarantee that the person does not pose a risk to the health of the community,” said Sarin KC. “Countries should therefore use risk-based policies such as testing and quarantine policies when a person is likely to import from a given destination (based on many factors such as local immunization coverage, infection rate, the presence of variants, the ability to test, treat and isolate, hospital capacity, etc., both for the host country and for the country of origin) ”, he added.
This is the reason why, even as countries begin to ease restrictions, many have yet to open their borders, even for fully vaccinated Indian travelers. Currently, HITAP, where Sarin KC works, is undertaking a detailed study on the effectiveness and necessity of vaccine passports.
“For now, passports are here to stay, but once the majority of the world’s population is fully vaccinated or infected and recovered, their use can be redundant,” he said. “But we’ll see when, if we get to this point, given the global resurgence and new variations of concerns.”
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