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#Vaccinepassports could grant some exemptions from restrictions and greater mobility within society, help speed up exits from lockdown, allow travel to resume between and within countries, and help to more quickly restore individual freedoms.
However, they also risk creating a two-tiered society between those who have been vaccinated and those who have not yet, will not, or cannot be vaccinated. It may also risk a breakdown in social solidarity and indirectly perpetuate existing inequalities.
How to balance these risks against the individual & collective benefits of greater freedoms is a key question that must be answered before a #vaccinepassport scheme can be implemented.Today's public evidence event, starting now, explores these issues. https://www.adalovelaceinstitute.org/event/ethical-implications-vaccine-passports-covid-status-apps/
Dr Alberto Giubilini, Senior Research Fellow at the Oxford Martin Programme on Collective Responsibility for Infectious Disease, says he is strongly in favour of vaccination passports, and thinks they should be a requirement for the foreseeable future.
Dr Giubilini argues that if we keep everyone in lockdown, even if they are no longer a threat to other people, or to the health care system, then we are engaging in a form of levelling down of equality: when equality leaves everyone worse off. #vaccinepassports
Next, @alena_buyx shares the perspective of the German Ethics Council.The Council published a recommendation on 4 Feb 2021, stating that, at present, it is 'unacceptable to lift state restrictions on civil liberties, on an individual basis.' https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-vaccines-privileges-idUSL8N2KA3A7
Dr Voo Teck Chuan, Assistant Professor at the NUS Centre for Biomedical Ethics, says that although #vaccinepassports are ethically justifiable in principle, whether they are acceptable depends on a range of ethical considerations.