An immunity passport could prove an individual has been vaccinated, and more freedom could be granted to them to gather in public places and fly. There’s a discussion here.
Now that a COVID-19 vaccine looks set to begin rolling out within weeks across the US, talk has turned to whether some sort of “passport” vaccination or immunity may be needed.
The idea is that once the vaccination is widely accessible, by allowing access to indoor restaurants, movie theaters, and international travel, the passport will be given to individuals who have been vaccinated to help them move more easily, both locally and internationally.
It’s still all speculation at this point. Nevertheless, on November 23, the International Air Transport Association (IATA), an airline trade association representing 290 airlines worldwide, said it was in the final stages of creating a passenger digital vaccine passport. The IATA Travel Pass will allow travelers, via a contactless passport app, to share their vaccination status and COVID-19 test results with airlines and border authorities.
The biggest airline in South Korea, Korean Air, could do the same. Speaker Jill Chung said that as a condition for lifting quarantine requirements for new immigrants, governments are likely to need vaccinations, ABC News said. Chung added, however, that this was not a question for airlines to “independently decide,” and that it was up to governments to determine when and how to safely reopen borders.
A passport for a vaccine is nothing new.
To avoid global transmission, some nations also need immunization certificates for diseases such as polio and yellow fever. And, decades earlier, foreign travelers held “International Certificates of Vaccination” approved by the World Health Organization and funded by the US Department of Public Health Services for Health, Education and Welfare.
“It worked well—travelers carried the record with them and used it to enter countries that required proof of immunizations,” former hospital CEO, health care advisor, and biomedical ethicist Michael Hunn tells Health.
Passport advantages for immunization are pretty obvious
Basically, the safest and easiest way to show you’ve been vaccinated is with a vaccination or immunization passport. Amesh A. Adalja, MD, senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Protection in Maryland, tells Health, “It will make it easier to understand who is vaccinated and who is not,” infectious disease specialist Amesh A. Adalja, MD, tells Health.
Hunn agrees. “As states, countries, and governments come to grips with new and evolving viruses and diseases, having a safe, secure, accessible, and coordinated record of immunizations appears to make sense,” he says. “The advantages are absolutely clear, for the ongoing health and safety of individuals and countries, the verification of immunizations against diseases (including COVID-19) is critical.”
It’s far too early for many people to worry about a vaccine passport or app-we don’t even know yet whether immunization prevents someone from being infectious. So far, vaccine tests have shown that the shots are very effective in preventing disease, but further research is required to decide if they also prevent the spread of the virus by others.
“It’s unclear if the first generation vaccines provide sterilizing immunity,” Dr. Adalja says. “What is clear is that they prevent symptomatic disease. There are plans to conduct studies to determine whether these vaccines prevent asymptomatic infection and contagiousness, but the results will likely not be known for sometime.” He points out that the data from the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine trials suggest that it can prevent asymptomatic infection and therefore contagiousness in some recipients. (This is one of several other vaccines seeking approval by regulatory authorities around the world.)
Besides international travel, an immunization record has other advantages. “It will help to ensure accuracy of dates for any future booster vaccinations or the ability to notify vaccine recipients of any discovered negative effects over decades,” says Hunn.
It will issue a vaccine card for this reason, the federal government has said. “We’ve set up everything [in] a draconian process, where when we sent out the ancillary kits which have needles and syringes, we’ve included paper cards to be filled out and… given to the individuals, reminding them of their next vaccine due date,” Army Gen. Gustave Perna, chief operating officer of Warp Speed, said at a briefing on December 2, as reported by NPR.
And in the UK, where the vaccine rollout has already begun, every UK resident who has the vaccine will be issued with a COVID-19 ID card by the National Health Service (NHS). The type of vaccine, batch number, date of administration, and a note to remind the patient of the date of their critical follow-up dose will be included in the details on the card. This information will be reported on the database of the NHS.
These paper papers, however, are not the same as a “passport” for international travel or admission to bars and restaurants. Over the next few months, this debate is likely to continue, with every nation making its own recommendations and plans.
