EU Health Ministers Told To Step Up Vaccine Distribution

As the European Union gets ready to finalize vaccine certificates, health ministers have been told to step up the distribution of COVID-19 vaccinations, Bloomberg reported Monday (March 1).

The EU is finalizing plans for certificates — vaccine passports — that would let those immunized slowly go back to normal. Governments across the bloc have been pressured by individuals and businesses to provide a timetable to end restrictions, according to Bloomberg.

EU Commissioner Stella Kyriakides told health ministers during a virtual meeting that mutations could better be tracked if there were more widespread testing and genome sequencing, per Bloomberg. She further said that governments should pace local vaccination distribution to match the increased pace of inoculation deliveries.

“We are expecting the productions and the deliveries to be increasing over the coming weeks or months,” Kyriakides told reporters after the meeting, according to Bloomberg. “We need to ensure vaccines are administered as quickly as possible so that no vaccines go to waste or are unused.”

The European Commission is scheduled sometime this month to introduce a proposal called the Digital Green Pass, which will prove that an individual has received the COVID-19 vaccination(s), has recovered from the virus, or has received a negative test, Bloomberg reported.

Some regions have joined hospitality companies in asking for vaccination passports to prove a person is safe to travel, but several countries are against the idea, according to Bloomberg. France, for instance, said such a policy could be seen as discriminatory and an invasion of personal data.

“Trust us,” EU Commissioner Margaritis Schinas told reporters, per Bloomberg. “We are working 24/7 to ensure the so-called trust standard, to ensure they respect fully our rules on data protection, security and privacy.”

The Good Health Pass — a collaboration of businesses, airlines, policymakers, healthcare industry groups and tech sector players — are trying to develop a digital health passport that could be carried everywhere by an individual.

The vaccine passport has always been part of a travelers’ documentation needs and isn’t a concept developed because of the coronavirus. The pandemic did, however, create the need for a vaccine passport that could be used for any kind of global travel for anyone going anywhere.