About Vaccine Passport
- A vaccine passport can broadly be defined as a piece of documentation proving someone has been inoculated against a virus – in this instance, SARS-CoV-2, otherwise known as the novel coronavirus.
- It could take the form of a signed and stamped certificate or a Quick Response (QR) code stored on a smartphone.
- The documents could become required for a range of activities from international travel to gaining entry to theatres and restaurants.
- Proof of vaccination could also become a “discriminatory” condition of employment, he warned, or lead to a “two-tier society” in which people need documentation to exercise certain social liberties, such as accessing public spaces or travelling internally within countries.
Vaccine passports do we have now.
- In addition to those like the ones issued by the Israeli government, several associations and non-profits have been issuing their own versions for international travel.
- The International Air Transport Association — the global trade body representing airlines — is developing an app called IATA Travel Pass that will provide airlines and other aviation industry stakeholders with a common platform to check for the proof of vaccination and its validity.
- Non-profit Commons Project has been trying out an app called CommonPass, which contains a passenger’s vaccination record.
- According to a report in The Washington Post, passengers have been using CommonPass for testing verification on select flights out of New York, Boston, London, and Hong Kong with United, JetBlue, Lufthansa, Swiss International and Virgin Atlantic since December. Prior to that, trials were conducted for United and Cathay Pacific flights to London, New York, Hong Kong, and Singapore.
Whom Vaccine Passports Help
- The primary benefit will be to the tourism and the hospitality industries, which are both seen as being at the heart of Covid-19 spread and are the worst hit by the pandemic.
- This includes international air travel, which suffered massively because of the outbreak.
- However, a major difficulty in implementation will be the lack of uniformity across jurisdictions in requirement and issuance of proofs of vaccination.
Source: Indian Express
