Surely a vaccination certificate for international travel should be implemented as soon as possible?

[wintertime6]

I don't understand why there is a debate on this? Surely it should be implemented as soon as possible (taking into consideration the availability of vaccines for all those who want to travel). The government need to step up and make some tough decisions and make sure that the fabulous work down with our vaccination programme isn't undone. It's done for yellow fever and that's a vaccine people have to pay for. If there's a valid reason people can't have the vaccine they can get an exemption certificate. And I've never heard anyone complaining about it?

To all those who think travel should be banned until most of the world is vaccinated- that will likely take several years. Are you happy for travel companies, airlines, hotels, all over the world to go bust? What about poorer countries which rely on tourism for a huge chunk of their GDP? I’ve lived and worked in Africa for years and it’s devastating to see how disappearing tourism had affected people’s income and the knock on impact on wildlife (poaching for money and for food.) So sad. If that continues till 2025 (when most poor countries are predicted to finish vaccination) there will be no wildlife left.

People also seem to have forgotten that the variant which caused most of our problems last year was from... Kent.

I agree the passports will be divisive, and as someone who won’t be eligible for a long time, the idea irks me slightly- but I recognise it’s for the greater good. Telling people not to travel after vaccination is hysteria in the extreme.

Ok. So you essentially just want to ban young and healthy people from travelling? I’m 23 and haven’t been offered a vaccine yet.

just give permission for the airlines/immigration to check your status on a centrally available and secured list, like they do when you fly to the US.

Is that a list maintained & available by/to all countries?
it sounds like a list the US govt keeps for itself.
It doesn't sound like a list that would be GDPR compliant.
Or maybe UK and other countries regularly contribute updates this very list used by USA.
I am happy to be corrected.

That CommonPass website took me forever to load.

Aruba is only destination listed? Dutch overseas colony near Venezuela.
I couldn't see who the participating airlines were, seems likely all USA.

@yeOldeTrout JetBlue, United Airlines and Cathay Pacific are the 3 that have been named. It's a trial only right now. But it's also been tested at Heathrow as airports will also need to use it in conjunction with airlines. globetrender.com/2020/11/10/commonpass-health-passport-heathrow/

@bumbleymummy

We could already have ‘proof of immunity’ certificates. There are millions of people that are currently immune after recovering from infection - including children and pregnant/breastfeeding women.

Why not let anyone who can prove that they are immune travel freely?

It's probably far less faff to just have proof of vaccine alongside a negative test if not vaccinated.

Many flight and holiday packages are starting to include tests within the package.

Nobody should be banned from traveling if they desperately need to. Like we should give the benefit of the doubt when people stretch the rules because of their mental health or family ties, a robust quarantine system along with actually enforcing home quarantine should be an alternative. Nobody should miss a funeral. I lost a close family member and missed the funeral because the funeral directors needed the space and insisted they must be cremated immediately. Which is not unreasonable but a bit sad and a reminder why we should take reasonable steps but at the same time take care of the people affected by the pandemic, both protecting front line workers and not being judgemental when there is a desperate need to do something if it's done carefully. If mortuaries are full, then it reflects why we need to consider the bereaved as well as protecting others.

@Moomin12345

At the risk of bursting your bubble : if foreign travel stays restricted despite the vaccines because the jabs aren't protecting people against other variants, we might as well theow in the towel and go with Johnson's initial herd immunity plan. The alternative is never travelling again because there will be countless new variants.

Yeah this.

The vaccine was always about keeping hospital admissions down wasn't it anyway? Not a method of somehow 'eradicating' a virus. If other strains are going to arrive then they will arrive ...

Also, if you're happy with exemption certificates for some people then you must be happy with the protection you're getting from your own vaccination. So good.

If you're vaccinated and you want to travel - travel. We can't police everyone in every country. How hard will it be for someone to forge a bit of paper saying they've had it anyway, if they really wanted to!?

Not necessarily for holidays, but I would like to be able to see my family in Holland who I haven't seen since Christmas 2019. Would like that to be available before general holidays, but understand that would be difficult to implement.

@yeOldeTrout

just give permission for the airlines/immigration to check your status on a centrally available and secured list, like they do when you fly to the US.

Is that a list maintained & available by/to all countries?
it sounds like a list the US govt keeps for itself.
It doesn't sound like a list that would be GDPR compliant.
Or maybe UK and other countries regularly contribute updates this very list used by USA.
I am happy to be corrected.

If you want to fly to the US if you are eligible to use their Visa waiver programme you log into a US government website a couple of days in advance, fill in a long list of personal details including your passport number which they presumably check to see if you’re on a banned list and pay a small fee. When you get to US customs they scan your passport and their system checks your passport number against a list of valid ESTAs immediately shows that you have an ESTA and allowed in. It’s extremely basic stuff.

It’s a US system of course, but since you’ve filled in the data yourself, giving them permission to use it for the specific purpose of gaining entry to the US and it’s used for that purpose only there’s no reason why it couldn’t be GDPR compliant.

People are also working on rather more sophisticated IT solutions, but it doesn’t have to be rocket science.

I could easily lie then about whether I've been vaccinated. They wouldn't have any way to see if the statement is true.

No you’d give permission to tie your passport record into the NHS vaccine record of course. International interoperability is the problem but it’s completely solvable.

lol, how inconvenient that my passport & NHS record are in different names. There would need to be some kind of identity check to make sure the vaccine record identity matched the passport identity.

How did you manage to have it in different names @yeOldeTrout 😱 genuine q because I can't in either country😂

@Abraxan

It might be ‘less of a faff’ but it makes little sense to prevent a person from travelling if they’re immune after recovering from infection and aren’t a risk to anyone while allowing a vaccinated person who may not be immune to travel. How is that fair?

fill in a long list of personal details including your passport number which they presumably check to see if you’re on a banned list and pay a small fee.

What an excellent idea, give all your personal details to foreign governments, with no guarantee whatsoever it wont be sold on. Hands up who wants to give all that to, say, the Chinese, Russian or Iranian government? How about ISIS?

Indeed we wouldn't all be in the shit we're in, and there wouldn't have been so many deaths, if it weren't for people gaily flying around the world during a pandemic

I don’t like the tone of that or this thread
Covid started for a variety of reasons
We all know it , we all read the news

Like it or not but we are a global world now
So the total lack of compassion for people who are totally unable to go home , see family is eye opening

It’s so much more than ‘have a holiday in fucking Cornwall’

And let’s be honest the 2nd wave was started by Brits who wanted to go to the pub and go Xmas shopping

It's funny how the first I ever ever heard of covid was an MN thread saying "stop all flights from China!" but then the first big covid event in Britain was about a British citizen who flew from France (after being in Singapore). I mean, closing the borders really was not going to work, was it? Even allowing for our food dependence on rest of world.

Vaccination reduces your chances of being severely ill but it doesn’t prevent you catching or spreading the virus. A “vaccination passport” is therefore pointless.

It’s not just UK OP it’s every where else that needs to roll out vaccines too! It’s a world wide issue.

@Darkstar4855

Vaccination reduces your chances of being severely ill but it doesn’t prevent you catching or spreading the virus. A “vaccination passport” is therefore pointless.

It is not pointless. The aim is to make sure we take the vaccine and if we do get COVID hopefully we can fight it off at home.

Covid is here and we need to live with it other wise the economy will go down the drain and fast

I'm not against it in theory... but how does it work in practice.

E.g. slightly unfair if you have not been offered the vaccine and aren't yet eligible?

What if you can't take the vaccine or are advised not to take the vaccine e.g. pregnant people. What about kids?

@Darkstar4855

Vaccination reduces your chances of being severely ill but it doesn’t prevent you catching or spreading the virus. A “vaccination passport” is therefore pointless.

I do wish people would stop saying this. The vaccines do not completely prevent transmission because nothing’s perfect but evidence is coming in daily that they do reduce the risk significantly.

People seem to have read “we don’t yet know whether it prevents transmission” ages ago and interpreted it as “it definitely has no effect on transmission”.

Because we haven't vaccinated everyone yet

This, and because the priority list for vaccination is almost exclusively age based. Therefore if you only allow the vaccinated to travel before everyone has the opportunity to be vaccinated you are essentially implementing indirect age discrimination. It's one thing to consider it once all have had the opportunity to be vaccinated. But until then it is entirely unfair and in fact discriminatory.