2-way vaccine passports?

peadar

The QR code is in place, and some countries (eg Greece, Turkey) now accept the NHS “vaccination passport” instead of PCR tests. But the UK itself doesn’t: when you return, you still have to get the tests. All the talk about vaccine passports for travel centres around acceptance by other countries: when will the UK accept its own vaccine passport?

FaceHead

Given that distribution of the vaccine has been prioritised by age, and not all people have had a reasonable chance to get it, the UK Government's legal advice at the moment is that accepting vaccine passports at the border (or in pubs etc) would amount to illegal age discrimination under the equalities act. 

Even once everyone has had a chance to get the jabs there will still be the question of whether accepting vaccine passports would amount to discrimination against people with disabilities or religions which prevent them from getting the jabs. Ministers will need to decide whether they will take that risk, but given that they've built the vaccine passport into the app, it looks like  they will, once all people who otherwise need testing have had a reasonable chance to get the jabs. 

Browntoa

The vaccine passport is a separate matter , the restrictions on return are due to the amber or red status , amber means testing on return , red means mandatory hotel 10 day stay at your expense. 

Discrimination does not apply as travel would still be allowed with certified PCR test results which you would show on arrival , the app use is not currently mandatory . 

peadar

Browntoa said:

The vaccine passport is a separate matter , the restrictions on return are due to the amber or red status , amber means testing on return , red means mandatory hotel 10 day stay at your expense. 

Discrimination does not apply as travel would still be allowed with certified PCR test results which you would show on arrival , the app use is not currently mandatory . 

What i'm wondering is if and when the vaccine passport will be accepted upon return to the UK, in lieu of a PCR test. In the same way as it is (AFAIK) upon entry to some countries.
BTW, isn't testing on return also currently required for green status countries? But testing on departure bound for and entry into Spain is not required?
As FaceHead suggests, a lot of money has gone into embedding vaccination status in the NHS app so one would expect it to be put to use at some point.

onashoestring

Although individuals may not develop symptoms of COVID-19 after vaccination, it is possible that they could still be infected with the virus and could transmit to others. That it is why the UK Government are requiring testing of travellers who have been in countries where  the number of infections are high . No doubt as more information becomes available on the effectiveness of the vaccines they will make some adjustments to the policies.

sheramber

Just because other countries  choose to take less precautions than uK doesn't make it right or the best option.

epm-84

peadar said:

Browntoa said:

The vaccine passport is a separate matter , the restrictions on return are due to the amber or red status , amber means testing on return , red means mandatory hotel 10 day stay at your expense. 

Discrimination does not apply as travel would still be allowed with certified PCR test results which you would show on arrival , the app use is not currently mandatory . 

As FaceHead suggests, a lot of money has gone into embedding vaccination status in the NHS app so one would expect it to be put to use at some point.

Some countries have said they will only allow foreign tourists who have been vaccinated i.e. if you've not been vaccinated you can't enter the country even if you get tested.  Israel was one example and expected to be somewhere that was going to see a lot of Brits travelling to, until the conflict between Israel and Palestine flared up again.

epm-84

FaceHead said:

Given that distribution of the vaccine has been prioritised by age, and not all people have had a reasonable chance to get it, the UK Government's legal advice at the moment is that accepting vaccine passports at the border (or in pubs etc) would amount to illegal age discrimination under the equalities act. 

Even once everyone has had a chance to get the jabs there will still be the question of whether accepting vaccine passports would amount to discrimination against people with disabilities or religions which prevent them from getting the jabs. Ministers will need to decide whether they will take that risk, but given that they've built the vaccine passport into the app, it looks like  they will, once all people who otherwise need testing have had a reasonable chance to get the jabs. 

It could even be argued the whole vaccine roll out plan was discriminatory. 

You can argue someone who is 28 and works in a supermarket is at higher risk than a 38 year old who can work from home.  Germany prioritised those in certain job roles for vaccination.

While the government decided on age priority based on medical evidence, they did not decide to prioritise on gender within each age group based on medical evidence. Men are at higher risk than women and we know the reason why - an XX chromosome pattern protects against viruses better than XY.  It would also be possible to argue there's medical evidence for offering the flu vaccines to men at a younger age than women, rather than saying over 65 for both genders.

Race is another factor but that's less clear cut as there's been reports people of certain blood groups are more at risk than others.  The UK NHS doesn't keep a database of everyone's blood group but some blood groups are more common in some races than others.  Another reason it's less clear cut is there's more people from ethnic minorities in jobs where they'll come in to contact with others and people from ethnic minorities are more likely to live in larger households.

The government's response to the gender and race findings was to say men and those from ethnic minorities must try to get a vaccine as soon as they are offered one, even though a black man might find his next door neighbour (a white woman aged 2 or 3 years younger) got offered the vaccine first through a local GP led scheme.

TheShape

epm-84 said:

FaceHead said:

Given that distribution of the vaccine has been prioritised by age, and not all people have had a reasonable chance to get it, the UK Government's legal advice at the moment is that accepting vaccine passports at the border (or in pubs etc) would amount to illegal age discrimination under the equalities act. 

Even once everyone has had a chance to get the jabs there will still be the question of whether accepting vaccine passports would amount to discrimination against people with disabilities or religions which prevent them from getting the jabs. Ministers will need to decide whether they will take that risk, but given that they've built the vaccine passport into the app, it looks like  they will, once all people who otherwise need testing have had a reasonable chance to get the jabs. 

It could even be argued the whole vaccine roll out plan was discriminatory. 

You can argue someone who is 28 and works in a supermarket is at higher risk than a 38 year old who can work from home.  Germany prioritised those in certain job roles for vaccination.

I think I heard that the logistics of prioritising by employment would have been difficult as the NHS doesn't hold employment details so that having prioritised those with specific health conditions (for which information was held) the most logistically straightforward prioritisation method was by age.

Of course any strategy that wasn't truly random (and equally accessible for everyone) is discriminatory.  Giving the most vulnerable a vaccine first IS discriminatory, as is vaccination by age or employment or any other method of prioritisation.

epm-84

TheShape said:

epm-84 said:

FaceHead said:

Given that distribution of the vaccine has been prioritised by age, and not all people have had a reasonable chance to get it, the UK Government's legal advice at the moment is that accepting vaccine passports at the border (or in pubs etc) would amount to illegal age discrimination under the equalities act. 

Even once everyone has had a chance to get the jabs there will still be the question of whether accepting vaccine passports would amount to discrimination against people with disabilities or religions which prevent them from getting the jabs. Ministers will need to decide whether they will take that risk, but given that they've built the vaccine passport into the app, it looks like  they will, once all people who otherwise need testing have had a reasonable chance to get the jabs. 

It could even be argued the whole vaccine roll out plan was discriminatory. 

You can argue someone who is 28 and works in a supermarket is at higher risk than a 38 year old who can work from home.  Germany prioritised those in certain job roles for vaccination.

I think I heard that the logistics of prioritising by employment would have been difficult as the NHS doesn't hold employment details so that having prioritised those with specific health conditions (for which information was held) the most logistically straightforward prioritisation method was by age.

Of course any strategy that wasn't truly random (and equally accessible for everyone) is discriminatory.  Giving the most vulnerable a vaccine first IS discriminatory, as is vaccination by age or employment or any other method of prioritisation.

Care workers are usually employed by private companies but most manged to get both COVID testing for being a key worker, as well as early vaccination.  Although, not too complex in the case of vaccination given vaccination clinics for those resident in care homes were held in care homes, so it allowed them to vaccinate workers at the same time.  

It's not discriminatory (in legal terms) to give someone something to bring them to 'the same level' as the average person, so given those who were classed extremely vulnerable had the remain at home, while others could go places and do things it wasn't really discriminatory to give them priority for vaccines so they could leave the home.

In fairness, given what you say about the NHS not having a list of job titles and given they don't have blood group info for everyone. That leaves size of household, medical conditions, age and gender.  Size of household is something they could work out from the data they had (how many registered patients are at an address) but that may have taken up too much time to do. So the questions are really:
1. Should they have done men before women within each age group?
2. Should those with other underlying medical conditions have been done before those without any medical conditions within each age group? (When I say other underlying health conditions I mean conditions which weren't on the list for determining whether someone should get the vaccine as a priority.)

Grumpy_chap

Referring back to the OP, there is some logic in the treatment of an individual varying in each direction of travel.

Suppose Country A has a low level of infection per head of population
Suppose Country B has a high level of infection per head of population

When an individual travels from A to B, Country B may impose limited restrictions on the individual as, statistically, that individual is less likely to be carrying infection then the resident population in Country B

When an individual travels from B to A, Country A imposes higher level of restriction as the individual is more likely to be infected that the resident population in Country A.