A former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says “immunity passports” for Americans to prove they have taken the COVID-19 vaccine might help the country get “back to a new normal.”
Dr. Thomas Frieden told CBS on Wednesday that “done right, immunity passports could be one of a series of things that could help us get to a new normal as soon as possible.”
“We don’t know if this is going to happen, but fundamentally we’re seeing companies and countries giving people a certificate of vaccination,” he said. “The risk of this is it will make inequality even worse. If people have both susceptibility to the virus and less access to the vaccine, they’ll have even more problems.”
Dr. Frieden, who served as director of the CDC from 2009 to 2017, said for the passports to work, there would need to be “absolute privacy,” adding that the vaccine should be “absolutely opt in.”
“Fundamentally, we’re facing a very difficult few weeks and few months. There’s not enough vaccine yet and we’re seeing the highest levels of cases, hospitalizations and deaths the U.S. has since the start of this pandemic,” he said. – READ MORE
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