ArticleBulletin of the World Health Organization2021
Immunity certification for COVID-19: ethical considerations.
Article in Bulletin of the World Health Organization, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 17 papers.
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Who cites it
17 citing papers in PubMed.
- A scoping review of vaccine certificate implementation in Canada and OECD countries during the COVID-19 pandemic: Outcomes and lessons learned.Human vaccines & immunotherapeutics · 2026Article
- Individual Factors Influencing the Public's Perceptions About the Importance of COVID-19 Immunity Certificates in the United Kingdom: Cross-sectional Web-based Questionnaire Survey.JMIR formative research · 2023Article
- Ethical considerations of the vaccine development process and vaccination: a scoping review.BMC health services research · 2023Article
- Applications of Social Media and Digital Technologies in COVID-19 Vaccination: Scoping Review.Journal of medical Internet research · 2023Article
- Public acceptability of COVID-19 control measures in Singapore, Hong Kong, and Malaysia: A cross-sectional survey.International journal of infectious diseases : IJID : official publication of the International Society for Infectious Diseases · 2022Article
- Article
- COVID-19 Vaccination Passports: Are They a Threat to Equality?Public health ethics · 2022Article
- Conflicting attitudes: Analyzing social media data to understand the early discourse on COVID-19 passports.Technology in society · 2022Article
- Risk assessment of COVID-19 epidemic resurgence in relation to SARS-CoV-2 variants and vaccination passes.Communications medicine · 2022Article
- Social Engagement in the Fight Against COVID-19 in the Urban and Peri-Urban Areas of Cotonou (Benin, Sub-saharan Africa): Acceptability of the Vaccination and Tracking Program.Frontiers in medicine · 2022Article
- The potential impact of vaccine passports on inclination to accept COVID-19 vaccinations in the United Kingdom: Evidence from a large cross-sectional survey and modeling study.EClinicalMedicine · 2021Article
- Vaccination passports: Challenges for a future of air transportation.Transport policy · 2021Article
- Article
- Scientists have favorable opinions on immunity certificates but raise concerns regarding fairness and inequality.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- COVID-19 response and mitigation: a call for action.Bulletin of the World Health Organization · 2021Article
- Easing Restrictions During Vaccine Scarcity. How Mitigation Measures Help Tackling Associated Moral and Behavioral Challenges.Public health reviews · 2021Article
- Acceptability of COVID-19 Certificates: A Qualitative Study in Geneva, Switzerland, in 2020.Frontiers in public healthArticle
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
17 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Restrictive measures imposed because of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic have resulted in severe social, economic and health effects. Some countries have considered the use of immunity certification as a strategy to relax these measures for people who have recovered from the infection by issuing these individuals a document, commonly called an immunity passport. This document certifies them as having protective immunity against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2), the virus that causes COVID-19. The World Health Organization has advised against the implementation of immunity certification at present because of uncertainty about whether long-term immunity truly exists for those who have recovered from COVID-19 and concerns over the reliability of the proposed serological test method for determining immunity. Immunity certification can only be considered if scientific thresholds for assuring immunity are met, whether based on antibodies or other criteria. However, even if immunity certification became well supported by science, it has many ethical issues in terms of different restrictions on individual liberties and its implementation process. We examine the main considerations for the ethical acceptability of immunity certification to exempt individuals from restrictive measures during the COVID-19 pandemic. As well as needing to meet robust scientific criteria, the ethical acceptability of immunity certification depends on its uses and policy objectives and the measures in place to reduce potential harms, and prevent disproportionate burdens on non-certified individuals and violation of individual liberties and rights.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.