Travel to Restart as Several Countries Roll out Their Version of Vaccine Passports

Japan is planning on introducing a vaccine passport to make travelling easy for people. International travel has become restricted due to the COVID-19 pandemic and Japan is looking at vaccine passport as a solution to ease the travel restrictions for people who have been immunized against the virus. 

It is expected that the passports will be in the form of a smartphone app and travellers will be required to get their QR codes scanned before they are allowed to onboard the flight or before they enter another country. 

Japan’s government is moving forward with this plan in hopes to resume travel for businesses, which was halted due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

However, Japan is not the only country looking to develop a system to resume travel for those who have been vaccinated. 

Canada is also debating on if the vaccinated status of the people should be used publicly or not. Majority of the Canadians supports the use of vaccine passports for travelling and attending large events. However, there are still some questions about its use in day-to-day life. 

61% of the Canadians say that people who have been vaccinated should be allowed to resume their normal life including attending public events, travelling, and using public transports. However, 39% raise the question of equity saying that only limiting these activities to those who have been vaccinated is unfair to those who have yet to be. 

France also claimed that it plans to roll out a vaccine passport to jump-start travel. The country is already using an app that can trace COVID infected people. Now the app has been equipped with a new feature to host the test reports of COVID. 

France will become the first European Union country to have a system of digital green certificate up and running by mid of June. The French app is already being used by 15 million users, a far more reach than any other application for this purpose. The system will contain lab test results and vaccination records from France’s centralised healthcare system. The trial for the app will be extended to Air France for overseas territories by next week. 

UK is also introducing an NHS based smartphone app for COVID-19 vaccination and testing status. The UK has confirmed that it will be rolling out a vaccine passport certificate allowing people to travel internationally by this summer. 

However, another question is raised about the equality of vaccines. Some people are finding out that their choice of vaccine is determining their travel plans. Not all countries are accepting every vaccine. European Union is only allowing US-made vaccinations meaning those who have been vaccinated with Chinese vaccines will still be banned from travelling.