Article Text
Abstract
In their recent article, Brown et al analyse several ethical aspects around immunity passports and put forward some recommendations for implementing them. Although they offer a comprehensive perspective, they overlook two essential aspects. First, while the authors consider the possibility that immunological passports may appear to discriminate against those who do not possess them, the opposite viewpoint of immune people is underdeveloped. We argue that if a person has been tested positive for and recovered from COVID-19, becoming immune to it, she cannot be considered a hazard to public health and, therefore, the curtailment of her fundamental rights (eg, the right to freedom of movement) is not legitimate. Second, they omit that vaccine distribution will create similar problems related to immunity-based licenses. Vaccine certificates will de facto generate a sort of immunity passport. In the next phases of the pandemic, different immunity statuses will be at stake, because the need to identify who can spread COVID-19 is unavoidable. If a person does not pose a threat to public health because she cannot spread the infection, then her right to freedom of movement should be respected, regardless of how she acquired that immunity.
- ethics
- law
- public policy
- rights
This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported (CC BY 4.0) license, which permits others to copy, redistribute, remix, transform and build upon this work for any purpose, provided the original work is properly cited, a link to the licence is given, and indication of whether changes were made. See: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
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Footnotes
Twitter @ruetxe
Contributors Both authors contributed significantly to the drafting of the manuscript.
Funding European Commission (H2020 SWAFS Programme, PANELFIT Project, research grant number 788039), Eusko Jaurlaritza (Ayudas a Grupos de Investigación IT-1066-16),Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (BIOethAI+, grant number: FFI201679000-P) andLa Caixa Foundation (LCF/BQ/DR20/11790005).
Competing interests None declared.
Patient consent for publication Not required.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; internally peer reviewed.
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