The drive for vaccine passports is picking up speed, as the European Union and China said they would be moving forward with new programs.
“China could encourage the public to voluntarily get vaccinated and gradually issue a new passport for those who have been vaccinated,” Zhu Zhengfu, a prominent Chinese lawyer, told the Global Times.
The Wall Street Journal reported that China’s foreign ministry is working toward launching certificates that will declare a person’s vaccination status or recent test results. So, too, the European Commission plans this month to review proposals for a digital version of a vaccine passport. As a result, many international travelers will likely need to prove they are vaccinated or free of COVID-19.
“The aim is to gradually enable them [EU citizens] to move safely in the European Union or abroad — for work or tourism,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told the Journal.
On Monday (March 1), European Union 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.
In addition, she said, “we need to ensure vaccines are administered as quickly as possible so that no vaccines go to waste or are unused.”
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As for the U.S., the Biden administration hasn’t said if vaccine passports will be part of the response to the COVID-19 pandemic. International standards for such a program do not yet exist, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.
“Until then, all air passengers traveling to the U.S., regardless of vaccination or antibody status, are required to provide a negative Covid-19 test result or documentation of recovery,” CDC spokeswoman Caitlin Shockey said, per the Journal.
The concept of having a health-related passport isn’t entirely new. For example, people who want to travel to certain African nations, for example, must first prove at customs they’ve already been inoculated against yellow fever.
In the case of COVID-19, some are raising privacy concerns.
