The Economist October 30th 2021 73
InternationalVaccinepassports
Hard pass
M
any countriesdid not require pass
ports before the first world war. But as
the conflict spread, states scrambled to in
troduce travel documents to help secure
their borders. The result, after the armi
stice, was a bewildering smorgasbord of
different information for different nation
alities that could create chaos rather than
clarity at border crossings. But returning to
a world where people could travel freely
across borders was by then unimaginable.
In 1920 the League of Nations stepped
in. It designed a 32page booklet with the
country’s name on the cover and such ba
sic personal information as place and date
of birth. Some governments grumbled—
France thought the booklet too expensive
to print compared with its single sheet—
and it took a few years for them to adapt.
But today all passports follow the same for
mat. Whether at Heathrow in Britain or
Moshoeshoe I International in Lesotho, of
ficials can glance at a passport and be fairly
certainof its bearer’s travel privileges.
During the covid19 pandemic, a similar
process is under way. States have rushed to
create vaccine passports to stop the virus at
the border—or at the doors to the restau
rant or gym. Often people must prove that
they have been vaccinated, recently tested
negativeor had covidand recovered.
This time governments are not alone.
Tech has thrown open the doors to firms
like ibmand Microsoft, industry associa
tions like the International Air Transport
Association and nongovernmental orga
nisations like the World Economic Forum.
Three undergraduates at the University of
Applied Sciences Upper Austria spent last
summer pulling allnighters to build a pass
that works across the European Union.
They can’t afford much marketing, but the
app, the GreenPass, hasbeen downloaded
100,000 times.
As during the Great War, urgency has
trumped coordination. India, which has
administered over a billion jabs, has a “Co
WIN”certificate with a qrcode, identify
ing information and, confusingly, a photo
graph not of the bearer but of the prime
minister, Narendra Modi. People in Eng
land can choose between a qrcode on the
National Health Service (nhs) app or web
site or a letter of certification from theirdoctor. In America, where President Joe Bi
den has vowed not to create a national vac
cination database, many different state
and private health passes are in use.
The trouble is that these passes are not
interoperable. Most look the same: a qr
codeon a smartphone or piece of paper. Yet
even scanning the codes can be a problem.
Different verifier apps read different
passes. Once scanned, the codes serve up
widely varying information, depending on
the national or local health systems or atti
tudes about privacy. Some vaccine pass
ports, like the CommonPass used in parts
of America, share raw data on vaccination
status. Others, like the one issued by the
nhs, yield only a symbol, a tick or a cross.
And the rules of the game are not fixed.
During a surge of infections this month, Is
rael yanked its “green pass” from 2m peo
ple who had not yet received booster jabs.
The administrative, commercial and
even psychological burdens are obvious at
airports. Traveller numbers have dropped
between 85% and 90%, yet reaching the
gatehas become a more demanding obsta
cle course than ever. Queues lengthen as
anxious travellers fumble for slips of paper
and qrcodes. Officials struggle to keep
track of which vaccines state regulators
have approved and how long which test re
sults are valid for which destinations. As
Corneel Koster, chief customer and operat
ing officer at Virgin Atlantic, an airline,
puts it: “It’s kind of a jungle out there.”
It is past time for standardisation. Yet
designing a digital health pass is trickierN EW DELHI
Why the world cannot agree on regulating travel in the pandemic