Immunity Passports Research Articles

Vaccination against COVID-19: the view of Brazilian federal judges.

The aim was to analyze the perception of Brazilian federal judges on the implications of COVID-19 vaccination. A study was carried out with Brazilian federal judges, who received a survey designed with multiple-choice questions on COVID-19 vaccination, covering topics such as its mandatory aspect, the application of coercive measures, hesitation to vaccinate, priority groups, the duties of Brazilian Health Regulatory Agency (Anvisa, acronym in Portuguese), the role of the Judiciary branch, and immunity passports. A total of 254 out of 1,300 federal judges from all states responded to the survey. Most respondents have a Bachelor's degree or a specialization (59.1%) and have been judges for more than 10 years (63.8%). A great majority of the judges (87.7%) agree with vaccine mandates for adults and for children and adolescents (66.1%). Over 75% of judges believe that all levels of government can impose sanctions on those who refuse to get vaccinated. The judges trust vaccination 93% of the time, 56.1% reject anti-vaccination movements, and 75.2% believe that Anvisa duties should be respected. The Judiciary branch actions concerning the COVID-19 pandemic are approved by 62.6% of judges, and 88.2% support immunity passports. There is a direct connection among mandatory vaccination, trust in the vaccine, and the adoption of immunity passports. Most federal judges agree with vaccine mandates for children and adults, support the application of sanctions for vaccination refusal, disapprove of anti-vaccination movements, agree with Anvisa's duties, and support judicial intervention in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Integrated Immunization Information System in Indonesia: Prototype Design Using Quantitative and Qualitative Data.

As the volume of immunization records increases, problems with fragmented records arise, especially since the majority of records in developing countries, including Indonesia, remain paper based. Implementing an immunization information system (IIS) offers a solution to this problem. In this study, we designed an integrated IIS prototype in Indonesia using the design science research (DSR) methodology. The stages of the DSR methodology followed in this study included identifying problems and motivating and defining objectives for a solution, design and development, demonstration, evaluation, communication, and drawing conclusions and suggestions. Specifically, this study began with problem formulation and a literature review. We then applied quantitative (questionnaire with 305 members of the public) and qualitative (interviews with 15 health workers including nurses, midwives, and doctors) data collection approaches. The resulting high-fidelity prototype follows the 8 golden rules. There are 2 IIS designs, one for the public as immunization recipients and another for health workers. The functionalities include immunization history, schedule, recommendations, verification, certificates, reminders and recalls, coverage, monitoring, news, and reports of adverse events. Evaluation of the prototype was carried out through interviews and a questionnaire designed according to the System Usability Scale (SUS) and Post-Study System Usability Questionnaire (PSSUQ). The SUS value was 72.5 or "Good (Acceptable)," while the system usefulness, information quality, interface quality, and overall value on the PSSUQ were 2.65, 2.94, 2.48, and 2.71, respectively, which indicate it has an effective design. This provides a guide for health facilities, health regulators, and health application developers on how to implement an integrated IIS in Indonesia.

Fight Against the Mandatory COVID-19 Immunity Passport on Twitter: Natural Language Processing Study.

To contain and curb the spread of COVID-19, the governments of countries around the world have used different strategies (lockdown, mandatory vaccination, immunity passports, voluntary social distancing, etc). This study aims to examine the reactions produced by the public announcement of a binding political decision presented by the president of the French Republic, Emmanuel Macron, on July 12, 2021, which imposed vaccination on caregivers and an immunity passport on all French people to access restaurants, cinemas, bars, and so forth. To measure these announcement reactions, 901,908 unique tweets posted on Twitter (Twitter Inc) between July 12 and August 11, 2021, were extracted. A neural network was constructed to examine the arguments of the tweets and to identify the types of arguments used by Twitter users. This study shows that in the debate about mandatory vaccination and immunity passports, mostly "con" arguments (399,803/847,725, 47%; χ26=952.8; P<.001) and "scientific" arguments (317,156/803,583, 39%; χ26=5006.8; P<.001) were used. This study shows that during July and August 2021, social events permeating the public sphere and discussions about mandatory vaccination and immunity passports collided on Twitter. Moreover, a political decision based on scientific arguments led citizens to challenge it using pseudoscientific arguments contesting the effectiveness of vaccination and the validity of these political decisions.

Individual Factors Influencing the Public's Perceptions About the Importance of COVID-19 Immunity Certificates in the United Kingdom: Cross-sectional Web-based Questionnaire Survey.

Understanding how perceptions around immunity certificates are influenced by individual characteristics is important to inform evidence-based policy making and implementation strategies for services around immunity and vaccine certification. This study aimed to assess what were the main individual factors influencing people's perception of the importance of using COVID-19 immunity certificates, including health beliefs about COVID-19, vaccination views, sociodemographics, and lifestyle factors. A cross-sectional web-based survey with a nationally representative sample in the United Kingdom was conducted on August 3, 2021. Responses were collected and analyzed from 534 participants, aged 18 years and older, who were residents of the United Kingdom. The primary outcome measure (dependent variable) was the participants' perceived importance of using immunity certificates, computed as an index of 6 items. The following individual drivers were used as the independent variables: (1) personal beliefs about COVID-19 (using constructs adapted from the Health Belief Model), (2) personal views on vaccination, (3) willingness to share immunity status with service providers, and (4) variables related to respondents' lifestyle and sociodemographic characteristics. The perceived importance of immunity certificates was higher among respondents who felt that contracting COVID-19 would have a severe negative impact on their health (β=0.2564; P<.001) and felt safer if vaccinated (β=0.1552; P<.001). The prospect of future economic recovery positively influenced the perceived importance of immunity certificates. Respondents who were employed or self-employed (β=-0.2412; P=.001) or experienced an increase in income after the COVID-19 pandemic (β=-0.1287; P=.002) perceived the use of immunity certificates as less important compared to those who were unemployed or had retired or those who had experienced a reduction in their income during the pandemic. The findings of our survey suggest that more vulnerable members in our society (those unemployed or retired and those who believe that COVID-19 would have a severe impact on their health) and people who experienced a reduction in income during the pandemic perceived the severity of not using immunity certificates in their daily life as higher.

Европейское общество в условиях пандемии. Мониторинг СМИ и Копенгагенская школа безопасности

The article aims to identify trends in the study of modern European society in the context of a pandemic. The foundation of the source base for the analysis was European media reports. The information array was processed using quantitative assessment methods and interpreted from the standpoint of the approach of the Copenhagen School of security studies. The school attracted attention at the turn of the 21st century by adapting a number of constructivist ideas to the subject field of the study of international relations. The school became famous thanks to the developments carried out at the Copenhagen Peace Research Institute (Denmark) from 1988 to 2002 by a group of researchers led by Barry Buzan. Other participants of the school are Ole Waever, Jaap De Wilde, Richard Little. The central publication of this project was the monograph Security. A New Framework for Analysis (1998). The basis of this analysis was the ideas of societal security, securitization of the most problematic issues in the media and of regional security complexes. The main disadvantages of the school's approach are the specific understanding of society in constructivism, which is considered as a phenomenon relatively autonomous from the state, the limited validity of the concept, the analysis of security through a set of changeable states and contexts. Despite a number of comments made to the school, the school's approach allows us to speak about the specifics of European society as a whole. The focus of the European media in the context of a pandemic is on socio-political problems, it gradually shifted towards the topic of the pandemic in 2021. Nevertheless, political issues still occupy a central place in the focus of international security perception. Quantitative analysis shows the prime importance of traditional issues at the pan-European level. The pandemic did not displace, but rather caught up with it in the total amount of information. The European media show the “subsidence” of the panEuropean level of security before the national one in the conditions of a pandemic as a regional security complex. Not only COVID-19 played a role here, but also Brexit and other internal processes of the region's development: difficulties with flights, the introduction of immunity passports, restrictions on movement, lockdown in some countries (Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands and France). As a result, in 2021, national measures to overcome the development of the pandemic led to a decrease in the number of reports on general regional issues. There is a certain shift in emphasis towards the problems of societal security, which objectively reflects the reaction of the European communities. Within the social field, which is the specificity of the European region, the sphere of restriction of personal and political rights of people plays a critical role. At the same time, in the context of the development of regional protest sentiments, this aspect is an important factor in the formation of a pan-European societal agenda. The situation with the reaction to COVID-19 affected the fundamental values of society, not individual countries, but European identity as a whole. This allows us to speak about the formation of a general level of social self-identification.

Perceived Fairness Concerns Within Pandemic Response Technology

Abstract The response to the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic has involved the creation of complex, novel public health technologies deployed at an unprecedented scale. One such technology intervention is the deployment of digital COVID certificates, applications that confirm a person’s COVID-19 immunity status via vaccination, negative tests or having contracted the disease. These certificates have formed part of governmental strategies to manage the resumption of travel and social activities. The potential impact of these technologies on daily life has led to perceived concerns regarding the fairness of the restrictions associated with these systems. These fairness concerns are intuitively understood by users, and challenges exist in conceptualizing them in a manner that is addressable with the tools available to application and system designers. In order to improve our understanding of the fairness concerns of users and how we might conceptualize them, we analysed 27 semi-structured interviews with Irish participants regarding the use of digital immunity certificates. Our results suggest that the user perceptions of the fairness of such solutions are primarily thought about at the group level, with the concerns of Anti-discrimination and Egalitarianism being the most frequently discussed. Based on our analysis, we further identify societal and technical accessibility as important factors when attempting to address these fairness concerns.

Blockchain in Healthcare: A Decentralized Platform for Digital Health Passport of COVID-19 Based on Vaccination and Immunity Certificates.

COVID-19 has become a very transmissible disease that has had a worldwide impact, resulting in a huge number of infections and fatalities. Testing is critical to the pandemic's successful response because it helps detect illnesses and so attenuate (isolate/cure) them and now vaccination is a life-safer innovation against the pandemic which helps to make the immunity system stronger and fight against this infection. Patient-sensitive information, on the other hand, is now held in a centralized or third-party storage paradigm, according to COVID-19. One of the most difficult aspects of using a centralized storage strategy is maintaining patient privacy and system transparency. The application of blockchain technology to support health initiatives that can minimize the spread of COVID-19 infections in the context of accessibility of the system and for verification of digital passports. Only by combining blockchain technology with advanced cryptographic algorithms can a secure and privacy-preserving solution to COVID-19 be provided. In this article, we investigate the issue and propose a blockchain-based solution incorporating conscience identity, encryption, and decentralized storage via interplanetary file systems (IPFS). For COVID-19 test takers and vaccination takers, our solution includes digital health passports (DHP) as a certification of test or vaccination. We explain smart contracts constructed and tested with Ethereum to preserve a DHP for test and vaccine takers, allowing for a prompt and trustworthy response from the necessary medical authorities. We use an immutable trustworthy blockchain to minimize medical facility response times, relieve the transmission of incorrect information, and stop the illness from spreading via DHP. We give a detailed explanation of the proposed solution's system model, development, and assessment in terms of cost and security. Finally, we put the suggested framework to the test by deploying a smart contract prototype on the Ethereum TESTNET network in a Windows environment. The study's findings revealed that the suggested method is effective and feasible.

Perancangan Sistem Informasi Imunisasi di Poliklinik Anak RS Bhayangkara TK I Pusdokkes POLRI

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), in 2018 there were around 20 million children in the world who didn’t get complete immunization, some even didn’t get immunized. In fact, obtaining community immunity (herd immunity) requires high immunization coverage (at least 95%) and is evenly distributed. Therefore, at this time to support the government's program in implementing child immunization, the concentration is needed by all health service facilities, as well as at Bhayangkara TK I Pusdokkes Polri Hospital as a military and police hospital which is assigned the task of supporting the program. For this reason, Bhayangkara TK I Pusdokkes Polri Hospital built an information system, particularly in the children's polyclinic to support and facilitate the implementation of child immunization. to develop this software using SDLC (Software Development Life Cycle) modeling. With this information system, it is hoped that it will assist in the availability of valid and transparent information for the community, especially parents, and officers to facilitate data management regarding immunization such as determining doctor's schedules, reporting, and printing children's immunization certificates.

Perancangan Sistem Informasi Imunisasi di Poliklinik Anak RS Bhayangkara TK I Pusdokkes POLRI

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), in 2018 there were around 20 million children in the world who didn’t get complete immunization, some even didn’t get immunized. In fact, obtaining community immunity (herd immunity) requires high immunization coverage (at least 95%) and is evenly distributed. Therefore, at this time to support the government's program in implementing child immunization, the concentration is needed by all health service facilities, as well as at Bhayangkara TK I Pusdokkes Polri Hospital as a military and police hospital which is assigned the task of supporting the program. For this reason, Bhayangkara TK I Pusdokkes Polri Hospital built an information system, particularly in the children's polyclinic to support and facilitate the implementation of child immunization. to develop this software using SDLC (Software Development Life Cycle) modeling. With this information system, it is hoped that it will assist in the availability of valid and transparent information for the community, especially parents, and officers to facilitate data management regarding immunization such as determining doctor's schedules, reporting, and printing children's immunization certificates.

Digital Covid Certificates as Immunity Passports: An Analysis of Their Main Ethical, Legal, and Social Issues

Digital COVID certificates are a novel public health policy to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic. These immunity certificates aim to incentivize vaccination and to deny international travel or access to essential spaces to those who are unable to prove that they are not infectious. In this article, we start by describing immunity certificates and highlighting their differences from vaccination certificates. Then, we focus on the ethical, legal, and social issues involved in their use, namely autonomy and consent, data protection, equity, and international mobility from a global fairness perspective. The main conclusion of our analysis is that digital COVID certificates are only acceptable if they meet certain conditions: that they should not process personal data beyond what is strictly necessary for the aimed goals, that equal access to them should be guaranteed, and that they should not restrict people’s autonomy to access places where contagion is unlikely. We conclude that, if such conditions are guaranteed, digital COVID certificates could contribute to mitigating some of the most severe socioeconomic consequences of the pandemic.

Public Perceptions of Harms and Benefit of COVID-19 Immunity Certificate: A Cross-Sectional Study in the Italian Setting.

A cross-sectional survey between 29 January 2022 and 3 February 2022 was conducted to understand the public rationale for accepting or rejecting the use of COVID-19 immunity certificates and to identify the psychosocial factors that mostly predict the positive/negative individuals’ perceptions of this measure. One thousand twenty-two Italian adults were recruited by a professional panel provider by employing a stratified sampling strategy controlled for gender, age, geographical area of residence, size of the urban centre of residence, employment, and wage. Eight Welch’s ANOVAs were then carried out to compare the perception of benefits and the perception of harms among different population groups. Multiple linear regression was carried out to measure the explained variance of benefits perception and harms perception by age, trust in institutions, and concern for health emergencies. The results shows that age, trust in institution, and concern for the COVID-19 emergency explain more variance of perceived benefits than of perceived harms of COVID-19 immunity certificates but the opposite regarding political orientation which explains perceived harms better than perceived benefits. The need for policy improvements is pressing because a large share of the world’s population remains unvaccinated. Moreover, our results can serve as vital information for similar health crises that may occur in the future. In addition, our results are expected to offer useful insights into public feelings around the use of digital health information tools.

Papers Please - Predictive Factors of National and International Attitudes Toward Immunity and Vaccination Passports: Online Representative Surveys.

BackgroundIn response to the COVID-19 pandemic, countries are introducing digital passports that allow citizens to return to normal activities if they were previously infected with (immunity passport) or vaccinated against (vaccination passport) SARS-CoV-2. To be effective, policy decision-makers must know whether these passports will be widely accepted by the public and under what conditions. This study focuses attention on immunity passports, as these may prove useful in countries both with and without an existing COVID-19 vaccination program; however, our general findings also extend to vaccination passports.ObjectiveWe aimed to assess attitudes toward the introduction of immunity passports in six countries, and determine what social, personal, and contextual factors predicted their support.MethodsWe collected 13,678 participants through online representative sampling across six countries—Australia, Japan, Taiwan, Germany, Spain, and the United Kingdom—during April to May of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, and assessed attitudes and support for the introduction of immunity passports.ResultsImmunity passport support was moderate to low, being the highest in Germany (775/1507 participants, 51.43%) and the United Kingdom (759/1484, 51.15%); followed by Taiwan (2841/5989, 47.44%), Australia (963/2086, 46.16%), and Spain (693/1491, 46.48%); and was the lowest in Japan (241/1081, 22.94%). Bayesian generalized linear mixed effects modeling was used to assess predictive factors for immunity passport support across countries. International results showed neoliberal worldviews (odds ratio [OR] 1.17, 95% CI 1.13-1.22), personal concern (OR 1.07, 95% CI 1.00-1.16), perceived virus severity (OR 1.07, 95% CI 1.01-1.14), the fairness of immunity passports (OR 2.51, 95% CI 2.36-2.66), liking immunity passports (OR 2.77, 95% CI 2.61-2.94), and a willingness to become infected to gain an immunity passport (OR 1.6, 95% CI 1.51-1.68) were all predictive factors of immunity passport support. By contrast, gender (woman; OR 0.9, 95% CI 0.82-0.98), immunity passport concern (OR 0.61, 95% CI 0.57-0.65), and risk of harm to society (OR 0.71, 95% CI 0.67-0.76) predicted a decrease in support for immunity passports. Minor differences in predictive factors were found between countries and results were modeled separately to provide national accounts of these data.ConclusionsOur research suggests that support for immunity passports is predicted by the personal benefits and societal risks they confer. These findings generalized across six countries and may also prove informative for the introduction of vaccination passports, helping policymakers to introduce effective COVID-19 passport policies in these six countries and around the world.

Travel fear and immunity certificates: a two-stakeholder perspective

There is an urgent need in the travel industry to devise strategies that will help navigate the current pandemic as well as provide guidance on how to prepare for the next pandemic. Given health and wellbeing are regarded as important aspects of sustainable development, doing so would build long-term resilience in the travel and tourism industry. This study analyzes the relationships among travel fear, protection motivation, and destination visit intentions in the pandemic context. While previous studies have proposed psychological factors as antecedents of travel fear, this study contributes theoretically to the literature by proposing a conceptual model that allows us to test the way the policy of immunity certificates—which is a non-psychological factor of a risk-reduction strategy—influences travel fear and subsequent decision-making behaviors, where the construct “protection motivation” mediates the travel decision-making process. By adopting customer and investor stakeholder perspectives, this study shows that immunity certificates are effective not only in enhancing travel intentions but also in enhancing the market value of tourism companies. Given that the efficacy of policies is better assessed by multi-stakeholders, the methodological approach taken in the current study can help to better understand the value of COVID-19 measures and immunity certificate policies.

Impact of Vaccine and Immunity Passports in the Context of COVID-19: A Time Series Analysis in Overseas France.

(1) Background: By summer 2021, overseas France turned COVID-19 vaccine and immunity certificates into passports to open travel bubbles. Subsequently, its territories set French records for both COVID-19 and 6-month excess all-cause mortality. (2) Methods: Official time series were collected to compare time correlations between air traffic and COVID-19 transmission and mortality in overseas France, before and after the implementation of immunity passports. (3) Results: Air traffic initially had a reversed relationship with COVID-19, which transitioned into a leader–follower relationship with the introduction of immunity passports. Essentially, air traffic increased 16 days before COVID-19 cases increased (r = 0.61) and 26 days before deaths increased (r = 0.31) in Martinique, 26 days (r = 0.72) and 40 days (r = 0.82) before in Guadeloupe, and 29 days (r = 0.60) and 31 days (r = 0.41) before in Réunion upon introduction of immunity passports. Moreover, air traffic became as correlated as community transmission to COVID-19 mortality in Guadeloupe. (4) Conclusions: Since the introduction of immunity passports, air traffic has been pacesetting COVID-19 within one month for transmission, and within an additional two weeks for mortality in overseas France. Responding to WHO’s call for real-world evidence, this study suggests that COVID-19 passports are not commensurate with health system goals.

COVID-19 Immunity Passports: An Emerging Threat to Public Health?

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Why ‘one size fits all’ is not enough when designing COVID-19 immunity certificates for domestic use: a UK-wide cross-sectional online survey

ObjectivesThe present study explored public’s willingness to use COVID-19 immunity certificates across six different domestic scenarios.DesignCross-sectional online survey.SettingUK representative survey conducted on 3 August 2021.Participants534 UK residents over 18 years...

Interplay of infection and vaccination in long-term protection from COVID-19

Interplay of infection and vaccination in long-term protection from COVID-19

Mandatory vaccination and the ‘seat belt analogy’ argument: a critical analysis in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic

The seat belt analogy argument is aimed at furthering the success of coercive vaccination efforts on the basis that the latter is similar to compulsory use of seat belts. However, this article demonstrated that this argument does not work so well in practice due to several reasons. The possibility of saving resources in health care does not usually apply in our societies, and the paternalist mentality that contributed to the implementation of seat belt–wearing obligation was predominant 30 years ago, but it does not apply at this moment. Furthermore, the risk/benefit analysis is totally different in both scenarios. In the case of seat belts, there is no way to discriminate between the users. In the case of vaccines, individuals present with unique circumstances that may differ substantially from those of another and might be foreseen a priori. This means that an analysis must be performed individually before vaccination is imposed. Finally, one must keep in mind that seat belts are often the only way in which we can protect third parties against a tragic hit by the occupant of another vehicle and are very efficient tools for this purpose. Vaccines, in contrast, do not always create sterilising immunity and are definitely not the only way by which we can avoid spreading a virus; immunity certificates, isolation, or even confinement may also serve as viable methods to achieve this purpose.

Efficacy of POC Antibody Assays after COVID-19 Infection and Potential Utility for "Immunity Passports".

ObjectiveNumerous manufacturers market lateral flow assays for the detection of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies, but there are many questions about the reliability and efficacy of these tests.Materials and MethodsSerum specimens from 60 individuals were analyzed using 2 lateral flow antibody assays, an in-house enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), and the Abbott SARS-CoV-2 IgG chemiluminescent immunoassay.ResultsThe BioMedomics and Premier Biotech lateral flow assays were positive for IgM in 73.3% and 70% and for IgG in 80% and 73.3% of specimens, respectively. The ELISA assay was positive for IgM and IgG in 73.3% and 86.7% of specimens from infected individuals, whereas the Abbott assay was positive in 80%. The specificities of the 4 assays ranged from 96.7% to 100% for IgM and from 93.3% to 100% for IgG.ConclusionResults of the 2 lateral flow assays were comparable to those of the ELISA and Abbott assays. Assay efficacy depended on length of time after SARS-CoV-2 infection.

COVID-19 vaccine rollout management and communication in Europe: one year on

Vaccines represent one of the most important methods to reduce the risk of hospitalisation and mortality as a result of COVID-19. To ensure the spread and risk of the Delta variant of COVID-19 is minimised, as many people as possible nationally must be fully vaccinated. Ensuring success in reaching high rates of vaccination relies on both effective risk management and risk communication strategies. This paper evaluates vaccine rollout management and communication strategies in five European nations: France, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland and England within the UK, updating findings from a previous paper on the same topic from January 2021. This paper evaluates these five nations’ management and communication strategies regarding the vaccine rollout timeline and prioritisation. Further, we discuss the effectiveness and importance of vaccine or immunity passports, highlighting the importance of ensuring that the needs of minoritised groups are considered in promoting the vaccine rollout, and ensuring fairness when prioritising certain groups over others to have earlier access to any vaccine. In conclusion, recommendations for policy makers and public health communicators are put forward.