Spain has said it intends to open up to overseas travellers from June, as plans for an EU-wide digital certificate go before the European Parliament.

Tourism minister Fernando Valdés said a pilot test would take place in May so that Spain would be ready to receive travellers the following month.

As we have previously reported, the EU has been working on a digital pass in time for the summer holidays.

It would cover anyone who is either vaccinated against Covid-19, has a negative test or recently recovered.

Mr Valdés told a travel conference in Mexico his country would be "ready in June to tell all travellers worldwide that you can visit us". However, any scheme to open up to non-European tourism would be dependent on the EU's digital green certificate.

Japan plans to introduce “vaccine passports” to make it easier for people who have been inoculated against Covid-19 to travel internationally, government sources said on Wednesday.

In line with other countries, the so-called passports are expected to be in the form of a smartphone app, with travellers scanning a QR code at the airport before boarding a flight or when entering the country.

The government is moving forward with the plan in the hope of resuming business travel, which has virtually stopped during the pandemic, to shore up the world’s third-largest economy.

Taro Kono, the minister overseeing Japan’s vaccination efforts, said last month the government may consider introducing such a system if pressed by other countries.

In the past he has warned that it could lead to discrimination against people unable or unwilling to receive a Covid-19 vaccine.

There is strong global support for vaccine passports, a new Ipsos survey for the World Economic Forum shows.

More than three-quarters of people worldwide think they should be mandatory for travel.

The Ipsos survey included over 21,000 people in 28 countries and found strong support (78%) for requiring travellers to carry Covid passports. The strongest support was in Malaysia and Peru where 92% and 90% of people backed vaccine passports for travel.

There was a majority in favour of vaccine passports in every nation surveyed. Citizens of Hungary (52% in favour) and Poland (58%) were the least enthusiastic about the idea.

Almost three-quarters (73%) said vaccine passports would make travel and large events safer, with support ranging from more than eight in 10 people in Argentina, China, India, Malaysia and Peru to 52% in Hungary and 53% in Russia.

Globally, 67% said Covid-19 passports should also be compulsory in public venues like stadiums and concert halls with the strongest support in India, Chile and Malaysia (all 84%) while in Russia and Hungary only 31% and 47% agreed they were necessary.

Two-thirds of those surveyed (66%) said they expected vaccine passports to be in widespread use in their country by the end of this year, although there were wide variations in opinions ranging from 81% in India and Peru to fewer than a third (32%) in Russia.

Strongest support for retaining them for only a few months came from Spain (54%) and Mexico (48%) while Japan was the only nation where a majority supported requiring vaccine passports for several years or indefinitely.

In the UK, international travellers will be asked to demonstrate their Covid vaccination and testing status using the NHS smartphone app, the UK government has confirmed. Certificates or vaccine passports for international travel were likely to be in place for the long term, Christopher Dye, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Oxford, told the UK science and technology select committee on Wednesday morning. “One reason is that Covid is not going to go away; it is going to be endemic around the world, it is going to keep resurfacing, and I think that, just as we’ve had yellow fever passports for years and years and years, we’re going to have Covid passports too,” Dye said.

Brits will use the existing NHS Covid-19 app to show their vaccine status if they wish to travel abroad, the government confirmed yesterday morning. The app will be retooled to function as a vaccine passport, or to show a negative test result.

Dr Ruth Payne, of the University of Sheffield, added: “I think once something is introduced and it has been used for several years, it is very unlikely that it will be retracted.”

 

The author is an aviation analyst.

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