Thoughts on the COVID vaccine passport

There’s been some discussion in the press and on social media about a possible COVID vaccine passport. Currently, as you’d expect from an unanticipated pandemic, the response to traveller demand has been inconsistent, with each nation making their own decisions about how to proceed. Some require advance or on arrival COVID testing, others have closed borders and a few have relied on track and trace. Keeping abreast of changes to know what the current situation is can be tricky, as I discovered when I travelled to Iceland in the summer. 

Now there’s a vaccine on the cards, IATA has put forward its Travel Pass. This will be a digital platform where data on tests, vaccines and other relevant information can be stored securely. The scheme is due to be piloted this December and launched in the first half of 2021. The advantage of a speedy rollout is designed to dovetail with the vaccination programme – in other words the idea is to ensure that if you have a vaccine early in 2021 it would be recognised on this database.

Of course, there can be no assumption that the vaccine will work for everyone, nor will every negative test result ensure that the person sitting next to you on that plane won’t be an asymptomatic carrier. There are no guarantees and with a disease as contagious as COVID-19, even a digital travel pass won’t provide enough reassurance for some.

In the past, other travel vaccinations have been linked to entry requirements. When I visited Panama, I had to carry the yellow fever vaccination booklet to show to border officials if asked; I wasn’t. When applying for a visa to visit Uganda last year, I needed to supply that same proof of a yellow fever vaccine as a condition of receiving it. The WHO has this to say about yellow fever:

“The vaccine provides effective immunity within 10 days for 80-100% of people vaccinated, and within 30 days for more than 99% of people vaccinated. Good supportive treatment in hospitals improves survival rates. There is currently no specific anti-viral drug for yellow fever.”

Right now, results from the coronavirus vaccine trials indicate that they don’t have such a high success rate. But in terms of vaccines being a component of the decision on whether to permit you to travel, there’s obviously a precedent. Many of us can choose whether or not we wish to fly internationally and we can also therefore decide whether we are comfortable with both the risks involved in air travel and also with our personal information being stored in the manner IATA suggests.

As Australia’s relative isolation and sparse population have helped keep cases low during the pandemic, it was no surprise to read that Qantas was the first airline to come out and say they’ll require passengers to be in possession of this kind of travel passport when a vaccine’s been rolled out. Boss Alan Joyce was quoted in the press at the end of November as saying he felt it was a necessity to boost confidence and enable air traffic to get back to some kind of normal. That news didn’t go down well with UK travel agent Tradewinds, who countered with an announcement that they would cease booking their customers on the Australian airline. Their argument? They were pro-choice rather than anti-vaccine, they said. (As far as I can see, they aren’t offering tours to Uganda, which would have been interesting.)

Personally, I’m comfortable with having the vaccine – in the same way I’ve opted for typhoid, hepatitis and even the fairly useless cholera jabs in the past. So long as my personal data’s stored securely, I’m also OK with carrying a health passport. However, I respect that not everyone feels the same way. What about you?