| Hey,
Do you feel like a vaccine passport is a fast-track to normality, or like a dystopia in the making?
We brought together three experts as part of the virtual Dialogues and Debates series from Mozfest: Alice Munyua, Director of Africa Innovation at Mozilla; Dr. Pamod Amarakoon, Director of HISP Sri Lanka; and Imogen Parker, Associate Director of Policy at the Ada Lovelace Institute to talk through the positives and pitfalls of digital COVID-19 vaccine passports. You can watch a video of their discussion here.
Here are some takeaways from their discussion:
Do they need to be digital? Accessibility is a core problem with digital vaccine passports. Not everyone owns a smartphone, especially in lower income countries.
And we still use paper vaccine passports for yellow fever. Could a downloadable "digital twin" that can speak to digital systems be the solution
Covid-19 vaccine passports could further increase societal inequities Not all of us have equal access to the vaccine. Lower income countries are still waiting on supplies, and there is a risk of a "vaccine apartheid", where those privileged enough to receive access to the vaccine will be able to live a different life to those without. The question we need to ask ourselves is "is this vaccine passport system going to be empowering, or exclusionary?"
Make sure the right guard rails are in place Governments need to make sure that any solution is legal and doesn't cause undue harm to historically marginalised communities. Private companies who are implementing digital vaccine passports need limits on how they'll use our personal information â and potentially profit from it.
Scientific evidence and medical research should come above techno-solutionism We don't yet understand the scientific basis behind the COVID-19 vaccine immunity to know if a vaccination will provide effective long-term protection, or if it will impact other public health measures.
Is there an "off" switch? If COVID-19 vaccine passports are a crisis measure, Governments must define how they're planning to dismantle the technology to stop its use.
A return to 'normal life' using COVID-19 digital vaccine passports isn't a simple decision. If you'd like to learn more about vaccine passports, here are some additional links:
What is a âvaccine passportâ and will you need one the next time you travel? (World Economic Forum) Covid-19 Passports And Travel: Free, Non-Discriminatory And âNon-fakeableâ? (Forbes) Patchwork of vaccine passports complicates return of global travel (Financial Times â subscription required) How 'vaccine passports' could exacerbate global inequities (Devex) WHO cautions against use of vaccine passports for international travel (The East African) Our next virtual Dialogues and Debates talk is "Big Tech & Germany's Election" on Tuesday 25th May at 8am PDT / 11am EDT / 5pm CEST / 8:30pm IST, featuring Felix Kartte, Julia Reinhardt, Amber Sinha and moderated by Julie Owono. Click the link to learn more and how to take part.
On behalf of the Mozilla team,
Jon
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