Lably
Skip to content

Vaccine passports during the COVID-19 pandemic

Use of immunity passports for COVID-19 vaccination

  • 21 min read
  • 3 chapters

Related on Lably

Through COVID-19 pandemic, Sport and Italy

Lab · Class 11The Physics of Sport

The use of vaccine passports was based on the general presumption that a vaccinated individual would be less likely to transmit SARS-CoV-2 to others, and less likely to experience a severe outcome (hospitalization or death) if they were to be infected, thus making it relatively safer for them to congregate. A vaccine passport was typically coordinated with policies enforced by individual businesses, or enforceable public health orders, that required patrons to present proof of vaccination for COVID-19 as a condition of entry or service; in the latter case, these requirements were intended to improve uptake of the vaccines, which in turn would allow for the gradual easing of overall public health restrictions.

Government-mandated use of vaccine passports during the COVID-19 pandemic typically applied to discretionary public spaces and events (such as indoor restaurants, bars, and large-scale in-person events, such as concerts and sports), and not essential businesses, such as retail stores or health care. In France, Italy, Ireland, and Canada, vaccine uptake increased after various levels of governments announced plans to introduce vaccine passports.

Vaccine passports were controversial and raised scientific, ethical and legal concerns. England initially decided against mandating vaccine passports due to worries that discrimination and economic harm would occur, but later joined the other nations of the United Kingdom in mandating vaccine passports due to the threat of the Omicron variant.

The concept proved divisive in the United States; Canada, the UK and much of the European Union citing civil liberties and privacy concerns. The U.S. federal government left the matter to individual states. While some cities and states chose to implement a vaccine passport rule, others explicitly banned them in certain public and private sector contexts, arguing that they discriminate against those who made a personal choice to not receive the vaccine. A federal proof of vaccination requirement for land-based border crossings into Canada by essential workers resulted in the 2022 Canadian trucker protest in Ottawa, backed largely by liberty-oriented groups.

History and background

Many governments, including Finland and Germany, expressed early interest in the concept. Vaccine passports were seen as a potential way to permit a faster economic recovery from large-scale lockdowns that applied to all residents (especially within the travel and tourism industries), improve the confidence of patrons concerned for their health and safety, and incentivize vaccination in order for a population to potentially reach "herd immunity".

In May 2020, Chile started issuing "release certificates" to patients who had recovered from COVID-19, but stated tha the documents did not yet certify immunity. Many governments including Finland, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States expressed interest in the concept.

The Royal Society published a report on 19 February 2021, where a lead author of the report, Professor Melinda Mills, Director of the Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science at the University of Oxford said: “Understanding what a vaccine passport could be used for is a fundamental question – is it literally a passport to allow international travel or could it be used domestically to allow holders greater freedoms? The intended use will have significant implications across a wide range of legal and ethical issues that need to be fully explored and could inadvertently discriminate or exacerbate existing inequalities.” The report listed 12 essential criteria for an international standard.

On 12 March 2021, Ecma International announced its intention to create an international standard which prevented counterfeits and protected private data as much as possible in a "Call for Participation on Vaccine Passports International Standardization" that referenced the earlier report from the UK's Royal Society. In August 2021, Ecma International announced revisions to Ecma-417 (Architectures for distributed real-time access systems) relevant to standards for vaccine passports.

An early advocate of immunity passports during the COVID-19 pandemic was Sam Rainsy, the Cambodian opposition leader. In exile and under confinement in Paris, he proposed immunity passports as a way to help restart the economy in a series of articles which he began in March 2020 and published in The Geopolitics and The Brussels Times. The proposals were also published in French. The idea became increasingly relevant as evidence of lasting acquired immunity became clear. Rainsy and other proponents of the idea, argued that immunity, whether acquired naturally or through vaccination, was a resource which needed to be used to limit the impact of the pandemic on the global economy. Many people in Cambodia depended entirely for their living on a tourism industry which had been wiped out during the pandemic. Poor countries could also benefit from recording immunological status as this would reduce wastage of scarce vaccines. The immunity passport proposed by Rainsy was effectively adopted in the EU under the name of "health pass".

It was initially unclear whether vaccinated people who remained asymptomatic were still contagious and were thus silent spreaders of the virus putting unvaccinated people at risk. "A lot of people are thinking that once they get vaccinated, they’re not going to have to wear masks anymore," said Michal Tal, an immunologist at Stanford University. "It’s really going to be critical for them to know if they have to keep wearing masks, because they could still be contagious."

In January 2021, Israel announced that Israelis who had received their second vaccination and those who had proof of recovery from infection would be eligible for a Green Pass, exempting them from isolation requirements and mandatory COVID-19 tests, including those on arrival from overseas. In February 2021, Israel became one of the first countries to implement a vaccine passport system, dubbed the Green Pass. They were required to access venues such as gyms, hotels, bars, and restaurants. In October 2021, Israel announced an update to its guidelines, requiring the most recent vaccine dose (or proof of recovery) to have been during the past six months. This change made Israel the first country to make a booster shot a requirement for its vaccine passport system.

Sign in to keep reading

2 more chapters are free with a Lably account.

More in Health

Food and Drug AdministrationFederal agency of the United States Department of Health and Human ServicesCenters for Disease Control and PreventionUnited States government public health agencyNauseaMedical symptom or conditionSeizurePeriod of symptoms due to excessive or synchronous neuronal brain activityVomitingExpulsion of stomach contents via the mouth or noseIntravenous therapyMedication administered into a vein