‘Vaccine Passport’, the new unequaliser

Amid the global vaccination drive, a system of Covid immunisation certificates, such as the European Union’s Green Pass, the NHS Covid Pass in the UK, and Japan’s Vaccine Passport, is evolving to facilitate travel. Will such a vaccine passport become an essential travel-document for cross-border travel in the near future?

The concept of a Vaccine Passport is quite old, though. As per the International Health Regulations of the World Health Organisation (WHO), certain high-risk countries require travellers to provide vaccination certificates for yellow fever. Historically, confirmation of having taken the vaccine for plague or smallpox was a prerequisite for pilgrims entering Pandharpur in British India or Mecca for the Hajj. A TIME magazine article of April described how the Vaccine Passport requirement for smallpox in America was maintained as early as 1885. A doctor boarded an America-bound train in Canada near the US border, and looked for a ‘fresh scar’ indicating a recent inoculation on the arm of every passenger. If no scar was available, the passenger had to get vaccinated on the spot or leave the train before it entered the US. In fact, around 1910, travellers to America needed to show one of three things: “A vaccination certificate, a properly scarred arm, or a pitted face” indicating that they had survived smallpox.

Not only international travel, a Vaccine Passport might become the magical ‘open sesame’ mantra to access a wide range of social facilities within a country as well. Israel’s Vaccine Passport, for example, was released in February, to help the country emerge from lockdown. And France introduced the Pass Sanitaire in June, and this would be necessary for French people wishing to enjoy everyday activities.

When Mumbai opened its local train network to all on August 15, travellers needed to get e-passes after getting their vaccine certificates verified. In fact, some states in India made both, or at least one vaccine dose, mandatory in some cities for people working in hotels, malls, schools, shops, salons and restaurants, or entry into restaurants, malls, cinema halls and theatres, and parks. Negative RT-PCR reports work in some cases, but for a very short period, of course.

Some people think that a Vaccine Passport would infringe on individual liberties. In France, for example, the Pass Sanitaire has induced an avalanche of outrage. In America also, in an opinion piece in The Hill, Kentucky’s Republican Senator Rand Paul wrote that any required proof of inoculation would be “full-on vaccine fascism”. The Republican Governors of Florida and Texas have announced that no Vaccine Passport would be issued in their states. Not only Republicans, the Democrat-controlled White House has rejected any plans for a national vaccine credential. But different social facilities will invariably be available only with proof of vaccination, for sure.

The agitation against vaccination in the US is again not new – it happened even a century ago. In his book Pox: An American History, historian Michael Willrich, however, pointed out that Americans began to conceive of liberty not only as freedom from government regulation but also as freedom to meaningfully and actively participate in public life.

And all Vaccine Passports are not the same. As the Henle y Passport Index compares the visa-free access of different passports to different travel destinations, a Vaccine Passport Index might come up soon. For Vaccine Passports would bear different levels of power, according to the issuing country and the type of vaccine administered. Simultaneously, Vaccine Passports may even open the floodgates of chaos in the sphere of international relations. China has announced that it would expedite entry for foreign nationals who have received a China-made vaccine! And Hungary has announced that it would not accept the certificates of countries which do not accept those of Hungary.

The World Health Organisation has maintained a stance against Covid Vaccine Passports: “In the context of unequal vaccine distribution, individuals who do not have access to an authorised Covid-19 vaccine would be unfairly impeded in their freedom of movement if proof of vaccination status became a condition for entry to or exit from a country.”

While more than half of all Americans are fully vaccinated now, this proportion is 5-10% or less in many other countries. And around 2% in Africa! The inequality is sharp and it would worsen further.

Vaccine inequality would invariably divide the world into two classes with respect to immunity and the power to access the world – the vaccine ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’. That the citizens of the less privileged countries would invariably constitute the ‘have-nots’ is an inescapable reality.

(The writer is a Professor of Statistics, Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata)