W.H.O. does not back vaccine passports – for now

The following is an article written by Reuters staff and republished by Rappler last April 6, 2021.

World Health Organization (WHO) spokesperson Margaret Harris says that the organization does not back the requiring of vaccination passports for travel. She says, “We as WHO are saying that this stage we would not like to see the vaccination passport as a requirement for entry or exit because we are not certain at this stage that the vaccine prevents transmission…There are all those other questions, apart from the question of discrimination against the people who are not able to have the vaccine for one reason or another”.

Editor’s Note: This statement from the WHO is proof of what we have been saying since last year. These COVID vaccines cannot create herd immunity, as they were designed to treat mild symptoms only. We think countries planning on implementing vaccine passports must realize that immune systems of younger, healthier populations have a better chance of creating herd immunity than these vaccines [Read Our immune system is the biggest mystery during this coronavirus outbreak. Moreover, research is showing us that our immune system offers long-term protection from SARS-CoV-2, see New York Times: Immunity to coronavirus may last for years. New studies have also discovered that is the human immune system has the capacity to evolve which makes it more effective in neutralizing new virus variants, read Our immune system evolves to fight coronavirus variants].

Some of the important details left out by the WHO spokesperson is the fact that the current COVID vaccines being rolled out are in the experimental stage. We do not yet know what their long-term effects are, and as such, it would be prudent not to force people into taking it. Moreover, people have the constitutional right to refuse medical interventions, and implementing a wide scale vaccination passport scheme is illegal.

If WHO has already stated that vaccination passports are not recommended at this time, why are US states like New York and California, and countries like Israel, and the Philippines, pushing for the use of vaccine passports?