After more than a year of living under strict border closures and lockdown measures, people around the world are starting to dream about international travel.
Freddy Chua, a Singaporean financial expert living in Hong Kong, said in February that the prospect of returning to his hometown motivated him to get the Covid-19 vaccine right on the day the vaccination campaign started in this special zone.
However, this still requires a series of documents such as `vaccine passports`, documents that authenticate each person’s vaccination status and help them avoid having to enforce strict precautions.
Chinese health certification application interface.
Legislators and medical professionals in many countries have proposed applying vaccine passports, arguing that the freedom to travel when possessing them will encourage people to get vaccinated against Covid-19.
Many European governments are negotiating details of an agreement to deploy electronic vaccine passports, but have encountered many obstacles such as ensuring data confidentiality and ethical issues when restricting travel to people who are not eligible.
In the US, airlines and businesses are urging President Joe Biden’s administration to take the lead in developing a vaccine passport system.
Meanwhile, the vaccine passport system has begun to take shape in China in the form of a free application called `international travel health certificate`, launched on phones earlier this week.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi mentioned this application during a regular press conference on March 7.
China’s vaccine passports are not yet internationally valid, and their holders must still comply with restrictions when entering other countries.
China’s international travel health certificate is a QR code displayed through the WeChat app.
This application is similar to the tracing system applied by Chinese officials last year to monitor the risk of Covid-19 infection among residents.
Many tracing programs in other countries have been canceled early in their development, or failed completely during implementation.
China’s tracing system has been successful because it is mandatory for people who want to go to restaurants or visit apartment complexes.
However, China’s tracing app is only designed to operate domestically and does not require external verification.
Medical certificates are considered `vaccine passports` for Chinese citizens.
A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said `many countries and international organizations have expressed their willingness to recognize Chinese vaccine passports`, but so far no country has publicly voiced support for this system.
The obstacle does not seem to lie in the passport system, but is related to doubts about the effectiveness of China’s Covid-19 vaccine.
Beijing has so far approved five vaccines for domestic use, two of which are from state-owned Sinopharm.
Vaccine passports also require countries to recognize the effectiveness of vaccines developed by other countries, even if the host country has not approved this vaccine.
Ben Cowling, an epidemic expert at the University of Hong Kong, said that it will be difficult for countries to agree on immunity due to differences in the effectiveness of currently circulating vaccines.
`Differential effectiveness is a particular obstacle to vaccine passports, because the idea behind it is to prevent people infected with the virus from entering the country, even if they only have mild symptoms. The scale of infection at the point of origin is also
China plans to negotiate recognition of vaccine passports with each of the 40 countries that have agreed to purchase their vaccines.
`They need to be coordinated at the international level through multilateral mechanisms,` Huang commented, adding that bilateral negotiations often take a lot of time and effort.
`I think there are many ethical and practical considerations before countries can deploy vaccine passports,` WHO emergencies program director Mike Ryan said in a press conference on March 7,
A January report by the Economist Intelligence Unit estimated that 85 of the world’s poorest countries will not be able to vaccinate Covid-19 on a large scale before 2023.
People get Sinovac vaccine in Hangzhou on March 15.
China is not the only country pursuing an independent vaccine passport.
JoAnn Tan, vice president of Singapore Airlines, said the mechanism will be applied to pilots on flights between Singapore and London from March 13-28 and could help develop standards for electrical health certification.
`If successful with pilots, we will research a plan to allow customers to store Covid-19 vaccination and test certificates on the SingaporeAir phone application,` said a Singapore Airlines spokesman.
Albert Tjoeng, representative of IATA, an organization with more than 290 member airlines, urged WHO to develop an international set of standards to authenticate vaccination records on IATA Travel Cards, emphasizing that this system is only a tool.
`IATA does not promote vaccine passports and Travel Passes are not vaccine passports either. We believe that vaccination should not become mandatory for air passengers,` he said.
Expert Cowling hopes that Covid-19 vaccination will be so popular that the world will reach a state of herd immunity and the global population `will not have to worry about vaccine passports`, adding that vaccine passports are only a short-term measure.
Many countries will likely continue to test the vaccine passport model, because its success will boost the tourism and service industries, which have been hardest hit by Covid-19.
`If governments want to open borders and restart aviation without quarantine, they will have to be confident in their ability to limit the risk of imported Covid-19 and verify the status of people entering the country.