For this reason, the WHO does not even advise on Covid-19 vaccine requirements for international travel at this time. However, if the vaccines do significantly reduce transmission, that will be great news – and even less reason for vaccine passports, as the high vaccination rates in the UK to date mean infections and hospitalisations will quickly drop.

Since the Prime Minister is reviewing ‘Covid Status Certificates’ rather than ‘vaccine passports’ per se, the Government will likely propose that a covid test status could be used as an alternative to a vaccine status. However, mass testing of healthy people could create more problems than it solves. This approach in schools has been criticised by public health experts. Lateral flow tests suffer from a degree of accuracy that, in a large population of healthy people, could lead more people to be wrongly diagnosed with covid-19 than correctly. The tests can also fail to identify people who do have the virus, in which case a covid pass could lead to potentially risky behaviours.

There is no silver bullet out of the pandemic. Free and fair access to vaccines, healthcare, quarantine, test and trace, and proportionate safety measures will all be needed to protect public health and get the country back to normal.

If the Government allows society to be segregated according to vaccination status:

• young people would be discriminated against, since there will be lower and slower vaccine uptake as young people are both generally at a low risk of serious illness from the virus and last in line to be offered a vaccination; meanwhile, children are still not eligible for vaccines as trials are ongoing. Further, if vaccines are required annually/periodically, young people could be discriminated against on a cycle as they will always be last in line to receive vaccines.
• disabled people could be discriminated against as some medical conditions will prevent individuals from being able to receive a vaccination;
• pregnant women would be discriminated against, as covid vaccines are not routinely advised for them and whilst clinical trials are ongoing, women may be cautious about vaccines whilst pregnant, breastfeeding or trying to conceive;
• some people with religious or other beliefs may be discriminated against, if those beliefs deter them from receiving a vaccine.

Some people have suggested that exemptions could be created to allow certain unvaccinated people with protected characteristics into vaccinated-only spaces – but a covid pass would incur a serious privacy intrusion for those people. Others may deduce that the exempt individual has health problems, is pregnant, or has a certain belief system – this is not only an invasion of privacy, but could lead to disadvantageous treatment.

The inequality and unfairness would not stop there.

At the moment, research indicates that people from ethnic minority groups, people with lower levels of education and lower incomes are the most ‘hesitant’ or unlikely to receive covid vaccines. Further, many of the estimated 1+ million undocumented migrants in the UK are fearful of accessing health services due to punitive data sharing as part of hostile environment policies – and may be more apprehensive still if covid passes become an everyday requirement. We cannot simply erase histories and experiences of discrimination and hostility that have created distrust – in fact, vaccine segregation would only deepen discrimination and alienate people even more. This would be disastrous for trust in public health authorities when trust has never been needed more.

Finally, it is important to remember that 94% of countries that have started vaccinating their populations are in the high- or high-middle-income category. There are millions of citizens of the world who simply will not have access to covid-19 vaccines for years to come. As we emerge from the pandemic, disproportionate vaccine requirements should not unfairly impede their freedom of movement and close the world to them.

Further, the Government’s repeated U-turns and ‘review’ into vaccine passports has done little to foster trust. Many people are now understandably preoccupied with protecting their right to freely choose vaccinations, anxious about how it could affect their employment, and worried about the threat of social exclusion, rather than building a positive association with their free choices over covid vaccines. Warranted distrust in proposals for an unprecedented system of vaccine checkpoints could rapidly blend into distrust of the whole vaccine programme.

There is some precedent in the UK on vaccine compulsion. In 1853, the Vaccination Act made smallpox vaccinations of infants compulsory; in 1867, vaccinations were made compulsory for all under-14s. The new laws resulted in fines, prosecutions, court challenges and even a mass protest of 100,000 people. The policy had sparked an anti-vaccination movement and the emergence of the National Anti-Vaccination League. Eventually, in 1898, the law was changed so that vaccines were no longer mandatory and the anti-vaccination movement subsided. Today, the Public Health Act 1984 specifically prohibits forced vaccinations – and we have some of the highest vaccine uptake rates in Europe. It would be backwards and counter-productive for the UK to make the same mistakes of coercive Victorian medicine policies.

In fact, when arguing against ID cards in 2003, Michael Gove – who is now leading the Government’s review of Covid Status Certificates - said:

“We as free citizens devolve power upwards. We don’t operate at the license or leisure or pleasure of those who happen to govern us at any given point (…) The idea that we should be licensed to exist by the state is, as a matter of principle, wrong.”

However, covid passes would do precisely that – they would be our license to exist.

Proposals for Covid Status Certificates must be viewed in the context of the ever-growing surveillance state and growing problems with data exploitation. In particular, we have been observing and challenging moves by political and corporate powers towards biometric surveillance systems for border control, law enforcement and generalised surveillance.

Many of the covid pass proposals would rely on facial recognition on an app. Once the population had been forced to accept this, it would not be too long before facial recognition checks came off our phones – after all, not everyone has a smart phone – and onto facial recognition cameras at so-called “seamless” checkpoints.

Tech vendors will claim facial recognition is necessary to prevent vaccine pass fraud, and also that it makes the certificate “more private” than an ID card as it won’t need to show other personal details like your name and address. But this couldn’t be further from the truth. In reality, biometric health passes could easily be like ID cards on steroids. Having your private medical data digitally connected to permanent, unchangeable, biologically identifying data like your facial biometric can be dangerously more intrusive than an ID card. Facial recognition opens the possibility of us all becoming walking ID cards, whose data can be accessed with or without our choice.

If people accept the claim of authorities that covid passes are the only way for us to get our freedom back, taking them away will create insecurity. Similarly, over-bearing airport security theatre and many of the excessive counter-terror laws enforced post-9/11 have never been rolled back, but expanded.

And, it’s not even just about controls from authorities – it’s also about the severely divisive social impact covid passes would have. The segregation of vaccinated and unvaccinated people will lead to fear, hatred, and a sense of entitlement among some to be abusive to others who are suspected of being a ‘risk’. A national policy allowing or encouraging such division could severely fuel and exacerbate hostility between social groups.

We are experiencing one of the greatest challenges the world has faced since WWII. The best way we can get through this is together – with compassion, care and community. However, Covid Status Certificates would force people apart, leading to division and discrimination.

UK laws generally respect medical consent and mandatory vaccines are prohibited under the Public Health Act. However, vaccine passports would clearly cause people to feel coerced, rather than supported, to receive vaccines. They would have a similar effect to mandatory vaccine policies, which are typically imposed by exclusion or penalties for those who decline vaccines. The penalty of reduced liberties for otherwise healthy individuals who refuse medical treatment or testing would mark a serious change in our public health system.