Good news from Greece re; Covid certificates.

[wwalsh]

Vaccination priorities set to change, Costis P. Papadiochos | Kathimerini
After April, the government would like to see the economy open up, especially tourism

 

[Tony Cross]

On the issue of revitalising tourism via 'vaccine certificates' I think it's an excellent idea and I would expect more countries to be interested. Not the UK obviously because they're now anti anything that comes from the EU.

My worry will be how secure the certificates are against forgery. I can foresee a thriving black market in fake certificates for those who (for whatever reason) won't be vaccinated. I think most Greeks want to see tourists returning as long as they don't make the COVID situation here worse. I would imagine that all countries would want the same thing?

 

[grumpygit]

On the issue of revitalising tourism via 'vaccine certificates' I think it's an excellent idea and I would expect more countries to be interested. Not the UK obviously because they're now anti anything that comes from the EU.

My worry will be how secure the certificates are against forgery. I can foresee a thriving black market in fake certificates for those who (for whatever reason) won't be vaccinated. I think most Greeks want to see tourists returning as long as they don't make the COVID situation here worse. I would imagine that all countries would want the same thing?

Agreed, absolutely imperative to the wellbeing of Greece that it gets its tourism and hospitality industry operating as soon as possible.
I think the Corona vaccination is going to become a necessity annually so don't you think that Passports, I.D. Biometric Cards or even the use of dedicated cards should be electronically tagged through a central data base for the proof of vaccines and this may eliminate forgery and the black markets.

 

[Clancy Moped]

A simple stamp in your passport would suffice......or is that a bit to easy?

 

[Tranona]

On the issue of revitalising tourism via 'vaccine certificates' I think it's an excellent idea and I would expect more countries to be interested. Not the UK obviously because they're now anti anything that comes from the EU.

I am afraid that is just nonsense. It is nothing to do with the EU - let alone being "anti EU". AFAIK there are no EU proposals - they are far too busy sorting out their vaccine mess. Those of us with long memories and some experience of both viruses and international health certificates appreciate the difficulties and are wary of bilateral agreements.

In fact the issue is agreeing on an international standard on both what is an appropriate vaccine standard and a system for the certification that can be used effectively around the world. there has been plenty in the press discussing the issue and no doubt today's papers will have more as yesterday the PM outlined the sort of proposals that are under consideration including app based systems or use of QR codes. a number of firms are being funded to look at the options. The correct way of managing this process is through the WHO.

The waters are muddied by the attraction of vaccine and test certificates for domestic use, for example to open up sports activities, theatres, festivals etc which might have different requirements in terms of security. We have already seen variable approaches to such things as quarantine and testing (even in the same country) and it would be good to avoid this for an internationally accepted certification. I fear however that bilateral recognition will occur for economic reasons and leave us with a long term mess.

 

[syvictoria]

Surely the safest and most robust vaccination passport scheme would be a centralised database with vaccine data linked to passport numbers and/or vaccine information recorded on biometric passports? That way it would be next to impossible to falsify and cannot easily be used for any barmy domestic schemes (as not everyone has a passport and only officials will have access to said database, not Wetherspoons, for example!).

 

[wwalsh]

hopefully the people will have money left to start their tourism businesses.

 

[Irish Rover]

I posted a thread today about the online vaccination certificate here in Turkey.
https://forums.ybw.com/index.php?threads/vaccination-passport-certificate.560119/

 

[Tranona]

Surely the safest and most robust vaccination passport scheme would be a centralised database with vaccine data linked to passport numbers and/or vaccine information recorded on biometric passports? That way it would be next to impossible to falsify and cannot easily be used for any barmy domestic schemes (as not everyone has a passport and only officials will have access to said database, not Wetherspoons, for example!).

That is the ideal, and broadly what you have in the current WHO health certificates even though in old fashioned paper form.

The problem with Covid is that unlike say Yellow Fever it is passed from human to human and therefore transmissibility is perhaps more important than protection for the individual from the consequences of the virus. So far there is limited evidence that the current vaccines reduce this (although a small scale study in Israel looks promising) plus we don't know how the virus might mutate or how the current vaccines will deal with mutations. Add to that the range of different vaccines in use even now and you get a very unstable position in relation to an effective passport system.

Travel restrictions are in place to reduce the spread of the virus by reducing the mixing of people. The current vaccines seem effective at protecting individuals, but it is not clear that they will reduce the individual's propensity to spread the virus. Therefore even if there were an effective passport system it might not achieve the objective of reducing spread.

P5 of today's Daily Telegraph has a good summary of what the PM said on the subject yesterday and covers many of the issues raised in this thread,

 

[Irish Rover]

Travel restrictions are in place to reduce the spread of the virus by reducing the mixing of people. The current vaccines seem effective at protecting individuals, but it is not clear that they will reduce the individual's propensity to spread the virus. Therefore even if there were an effective passport system it might not achieve the objective of reducing spread.

I guess everyone knows and accepts that people travelling and mixing together increases the risk. Nobody expects a passport system to be as effective as banning or severely curtailing travel. The objective of a passport system is not to improve the current situation. It is to allow the economy to start to function in a more normal way and to allow people to resume living their lives in a more normal way.

 

[Tranona]

I guess everyone knows and accepts that people travelling and mixing together increases the risk. Nobody expects a passport system to be as effective as banning or severely curtailing travel. The objective of a passport system is not to improve the current situation. It is to allow the economy to start to function in a more normal way and to allow people to resume living their lives in a more normal way.

I agree, but it won't work universally until the level of vaccination is more equal around the world. As we can see now there is huge variation in both the approach to vaccination and the extent even in neighbouring countries in Europe. Closed societies and economies - the UK is probably the closest to this now in Europe will find it easier to control spread and allow freedoms, but as we saw last year even bilateral travel corridors were problematic.

 

[st599]

IATA already have working prototypes testing with Emirates. The question is, will the regional apps/passports work with the IATA one. Will labs be able to upload the required test results and vaccination dates?
IATA Travel Pass Initiative

The UK's current handwritten bit of card probably won't be enough.