I downloaded my vaccine passport the other day.
Of course, it wasn’t called a vaccine passport. Rather, it was an “Excelsior Pass,” issued by New York State. In addition to verifying that I have been fully vaccinated, it has a QR code that ticket-takers can scan when I want to go to Madison Square Garden to see the resurgent Knicks or Yankee Stadium to watch the faltering Yankees. It can also show the last time the holder has tested negative for Covid-19; more on that in a moment.
The Excelsior Pass, developed with IBM, is the first government-issued proof of vaccination in the U.S. But it won’t be the last—at least 17 more are in the works in the U.S. alone. In the media, and among government officials, vaccine passports are the subject of debate and controversy. Right-wing pundits and politicians have denounced them as a threat to personal liberty—just like mask mandates. Many liberals worry that they will further exacerbate “pandemic inequality” because the vaccination rate among the poor is low. Earlier this month, the White House declared that Americans would not be required to “obtain a single vaccination credential.”
On the other hand, the Washington Post reported in late March that the Department of Health and Human Services is “working to develop a standard way of handling credentials … that would allow Americans to prove they’ve been vaccinated against the novel coronavirus as businesses try to reopen.” At a recent White House pandemic briefing, Jeff Zients, Biden’s coronavirus coordinator, said that the administration’s goal was to “help ensure that any solution in this area should be simple, free, open source, accessible to people both digitally and on paper, and designed from the start to protect people’s privacy.”
That doesn’t exactly sound as if the administration is opposed to the idea of vaccine passports. And, indeed, it’s not. There may not be a single national passport, but states and the private sector are developing any number of certification apps. Regardless of what they are called or however strident the opposition, vaccine passports are, in fact, going to be inevitable for any return to something resembling normal interaction.
For example, universities are going to need them soon. Several dozen universities are already requiring all incoming students for the fall 2021 semester to be vaccinated—small schools like Roger Williams University in Bristol, Rhode Island, and large institutions like Duke University. The California State University system is requiring not just students but faculty and staff to be vaccinated once the Food and Drug Administration gives the vaccines its full approval (as opposed to the current emergency use authorization). (In all cases, people who can cite religious or medical reasons for skipping vaccinations are exempt.) With additional schools announcing vaccine mandates almost daily, it seems likely that by September the vast majority of universities will require proof that students have been vaccinated.
Given that universities have been a chief source of infection—with 535,000 Covid-19 cases, according to the New York Times—it is hardly a surprise that school officials nationwide would want a vaccinated student body. Brian Clark, a Brown University spokesman, told me that there has been very little pushback. “Most on campus recognize that the sooner the vast majority of our community is vaccinated, the sooner we can return to a more traditional campus experience,” he wrote in an email.
Americans who want to take that long-delayed European vacation are going to need vaccine passports. Just a few days ago, the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, told the New York Times that because the U.S. is using vaccines that have been approved by the European Medicines Agency, Americans would be free to travel to any of the EU countries. But to do so, they are going to have to prove they have received one of the Pfizer, Moderna or Johnson & Johnson vaccines. From the Times article:
Technical discussions have been going on for several weeks between European Union and United States officials on how to practically and technologically make vaccine certificates from each place broadly readable so that citizens can use them to travel without restrictions.
Inevitably, airlines will have to enforce any vaccine certification requirement imposed by European countries—which means that many international flights will be restricted to those who have been vaccinated and can prove it.