When COVID-19 hit the global financial and economical market last year, we never thought we would be talking about things like vaccine visa or vaccine passport. Far from vaccine visa talks, we didn't even think about combining those two utterly dissimilar words except for alliteration. And look at us now.
We do not know how long the pandemic-era disruption will continue, but its economic impact has been severe. Travel has been one of the sectors most visibly affected by border closures and uncertainty. That is why ideas like vaccine-linked travel requirements emerged so quickly.
With travel restricted and quarantine rules imposed by many countries, attention shifted quickly toward whether COVID vaccination could support reopening. As more people received doses, debate also intensified around vaccine uptake and policy responses. That tension became part of the wider conversation about who would be able to move internationally and under what conditions.
Though some people were skeptical about newly developed vaccines, early public-health data gave governments reasons to keep pushing vaccination programs. Countries with high uptake were watched closely for signs that transmission and severe outcomes could fall. Those signals were part of why vaccine-linked travel debates gained momentum.
European countries like Denmark and Sweden are said to come with Vaccine Passport by the end of February, 2021. That would mean an inoculated people from and within those countries could travel without restrictions. Similar trend is in plan by the United Kingdom as well. It is likely the countries under European Commission will follow the same suite as the president of EU Ursula von der Leyen was heard talking about vaccine visa.
However, there is nothing extraordinary about the vaccine visa. It's more like a small piece of certificate confirming that a particular person has received the jab. It could be simply accessed from the government websites where the track record of the inoculation is maintained and be saved in your smartphones. Whenever required at checkpoints and terminals it could be simply shown to the people in charge.
At the time, it was still early to predict how quickly similar requirements would spread across Asia. Even so, countries such as Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, and several Middle Eastern states were already being discussed as possible adopters of stricter travel-entry rules. That uncertainty was exactly what made the topic so important for travellers to watch.
However, this is set to look like just the beginning of a long journey towards creating a safe, COVID free travel and come back to the post pandemic world. With vaccine visas in place, it will be challenging for people to travel at first because not all will have the opportunity to get the jab at once. People will have to wait for months or even years before vaccine becomes available to all. And we can't ignore the anti-vaxxers and the skeptics.
