British scientists have warned that travellers will be required to take a vaccine for the Chinese coronavirus every single time they go on a foreign holiday.
A team of scientists at Oxford University in a report published in the Royal Society Journal on Friday warned that it is unclear how long vaccines will be effective in immunizing people, and therefore countries may require proof of recent vaccination.
The authors of the study claimed that the concept of vaccine passports is “feasible” but stipulated that such a system should not be put into place until there is global agreement on the parameters of the scheme.
One of the lead authors of the study, epidemiologist Christopher Dye of the Department of Zoology at Oxford, said per The Telegraph: “An effective vaccine passport system that would allow the return to pre-Covid activities, including travel, without compromising personal or public health, must meet a set of demanding criteria – but it is feasible.”
“If we thought that the duration of protection was just a matter of months, then the sort of criteria that might be introduced – we’re not saying they should be – is that when one travels internationally for a short trip, going on vacation for example, that one is vaccinated each time on that occasion for that particular trip.”
Another lead author of the report, Professor Melinda Mills, said that governments will need to determine in what circumstances a vaccine passport should be used.
“Is it literally a passport to allow international travel or could it be used domestically to allow holders greater freedoms?” Professor Mills questioned.
“The intended use will have significant implications across a wide range of legal and ethical issues that need to be fully explored and could inadvertently discriminate or exacerbate existing inequalities,” she explained.
While government officials such as Vaccine Minister Nadhim Zahawi and Cabinet Office Minister Michael Gove have denied that the government will introduce vaccine passports, the British government has reportedly been funding eight separate projects to develop health passes.
On Monday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that vaccine passports will “inevitably” be adopted, saying: “I think that is going to be very much in the mix down the road, I think that is going to happen.”
Others have warned that implementing such a system will infringe upon the hard-won liberties of Western society.
Writing in The Telegraph, Silkie Carlo, the director of civil liberties campaign group Big Brother Watch, warned that in the “war against the coronavirus” the United Kingdom risks “emerging like some sort of China-adjunct – a high-tech dystopia where citizens flash their vaccine IDs and biological risk scores to buy a pint of milk, or government-approved facial recognition for a pint of beer.”
“Our country survived the 2oth century because our forebearers gave up their lives for freedom. Today, some Brits are willing to give up their freedom for just about anything,” Carlo lamented.
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