HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) – Developing vaccination passports to verify the immunization status of COVID-19 and to allow inoculated people to travel more freely, to buy and eat have become the last turning point in America’s perpetual political wars, Republicans describing it as a difficult -introduction to personal freedom and private health choices.
There is currently only one state – a limited New York government partnership with a private company – but that has not stopped GOP lawmakers from a handful of states from speeding up legislative proposals to ban their use.
The argument as to whether passports are a sensitive response to the pandemic or overcoming the government echoes the bitter disputes over the past year over masks, closure orders and even vaccines themselves.
Vaccine passports are usually an application with a code that checks if someone has been vaccinated or has recently been tested negative for COVID-19. They are used in Israel and developing in parts of Europe, seen as a way to safely help rebuild the pandemic-devastated tourism industry.
They are intended to enable businesses to open safely as the vaccine momentum gains momentum and reflects existing measures for schools and travel abroad that require proof of immunization against various diseases.
But lawmakers across the country are already taking a stand against the idea. Pennsylvania GOP senators are drafting legislation banning the use of vaccine passports, also known as health certificates or travel permits, to ban people from routine activities.
“We have constitutional rights and health privacy laws for a reason,” said Pennsylvania House Majority Leader Kerry Benninghoff, a Republican. “It should not cease to exist in a time of crisis. These passports can start with COVID-19, but where will they end? ”
Benninghoff said this week that his concern was “using taxpayers’ money to generate a system that will now possibly be in the hands of mega-technology organizations that have already had problems with hacking and security issues.”
A Democratic colleague, Rep. Chris Rabb of Philadelphia sees value in vaccine passports if they are carefully implemented.
“There is a role in the use of technology and other means to confirm people’s status,” Rabb said. “But we have concerns about confidentiality, surveillance and unfair access.”
Republican lawmakers in other states have also made proposals to ban or limit them. A bill introduced Wednesday in the Arkansas Legislature would prevent government officials from applying for vaccine passports for any reason and would ban their use as a condition of “entry, travel, education, employment or services.”
The sponsor, Republican State Sen. Trent Garner, called the vaccine passports “just another example of the Biden administration using COVID-19 to impose regulations or restrictions on ordinary Americans.”
The administration of President Joe Biden has largely adopted a practical approach to vaccine passports.
At a news conference this week, Andy Slavitt, interim administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said he considers them a project for the private sector, not the government.
He said the government is considering federal guidelines to guide the process around vaccine passports. Among his concerns: Not everyone who needs a passport has a smartphone; passports should be free and in several languages; and private health information must be protected.
“There will be organizations that want to use them. There will be organizations that do not want to use them, “said Dr. Brian Anderson of Miter, who operates federally funded research centers and is part of a coalition working to develop standards for vaccine certifications to make them more easy to use between suppliers.
Anderson noted that the vaccination accreditation initiative does not make recommendations on how – or even if – organizations choose to use the certifications.
In Montana, GOP lawmakers voted this week on the party line to advance a pair of bills that would prohibit discrimination based on vaccine status or possession of an immunity passport and to ban the use of vaccine status or passports to obtain certain benefits and services.
And an Ohio Republican lawmaker who started students spoke about the concept, saying several restrictions or mandates are not the answer to every COVID-19 problem.
“Ohioians are encouraged to get the COVID-19 vaccine for the health and well-being of themselves and others,” said Rep. Al Cutrona. “However, a vaccine should not be mandated or requested by our government for our people to integrate back into a sense of normalcy.”
On Friday, Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis issued an executive order stating that no government entity can issue a vaccine passport and that companies in that state cannot apply for them. He said he expected the legislature to pass a similar law.
His order said that the need for “so-called COVID-19 vaccine passports to participate in everyday life – such as attending a sporting event, owning a restaurant or going to a cinema – would create two classes of citizens.” .
U.S. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Georgia, a newly elected member who embraced and promoted a number of far-right political positions, told her supporters on Facebook earlier this week that “something called a vaccine passport” was a form of “corporate communism” and part of a democratic effort to control people’s lives.
A GOP lawmaker in Louisiana also introduced a bill to prevent the state from including any vaccination information in the Louisiana driver’s license or to make the issuance of the driver’s license subject to vaccine status.
In New York, a government-sponsored vaccine passport called the Excelsior Pass is introduced. A smartphone app shows if someone has been vaccinated or tested negative for COVID-19 recently.
Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo backed the idea of leaving an event venue open, for example, using his own smartphone to scan a concertgoer’s code.
New York officials have not released specific details about how the app works, access someone’s vaccination or testing status, or protect the user’s name, date of birth, or location where their code was scanned. The privacy policy of the application states that the data will be “maintained in a secure manner” and will not be used for sales or marketing purposes or shared with a third party. But some privacy experts say the public needs more information to make sure its information is protected.
Albert Fox Cahn, founder and executive director of the Surveillance Technology Surveillance Project at the Center for Urban Justice, a civil rights and privacy group in New York, warned that Excelsior Pass creates a new layer of surveillance without sufficient details on how to which collects data or protects confidentiality.
“Basically we only have screenshots of the user interface and not much more,” Cahn said of the Excelsior Pass.
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Associated Press writers Andrew Welsh-Huggins of Columbus, Ohio; Marina Villeneuve of Albany, New York; Candice Choi in New York; Andrew DeMillo in Little Rock, Arkansas; Amy Beth Hanson in Helena, Montana; and Melinda Deslatte of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, contributed.