A Ministry of Foreign Affairs official on Tuesday said the government plans to engage with Japan on talks to recognize COVID-19 vaccines developed or approved in Taiwan to facilitate travel between the two countries.
Such talks are welcome, given the number of people in Taiwan who received the locally developed Medigen vaccine, and the large volume of traffic between the two countries prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.
However, that such talks are even needed speaks to the chaos that characterizes international travel at present, and the complete failure of the global community to coordinate on the post-pandemic resumption of regular international travel.
Travelers now face the challenge of each country having different quarantine regulations, different lists of approved vaccines, and different systems of recognizing and certifying fully vaccinated people.
For example, Canada recognizes vaccines made by Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson. The US recognizes those four, in addition to the two major Chinese brands, Sinopharm and Sinovac. New Zealand recognizes 23 vaccine brands, including Medigen. On the issue of quarantine, New Zealand requires isolation for 14 days, Canada for 10 days, and the US does not require quarantine for fully vaccinated travelers.
Many countries require some proof of vaccination, but different certificates are used worldwide. For example, the UK uses the NHS COVID Pass, and EU member states use the EU Digital COVID Certificate. In the US, the Centers for Disease Control issues a vaccination card, and countries such as Taiwan issue their own paper certificate that is stamped at the time of vaccination. Given the lack of uniformity, travelers often find themselves consulting officials from the country they plan to travel to, and they might need to have their certificate translated and notarized.
The WHO maintains a list of approved vaccines on its Web site. However, related policies are independently decided by WHO member states. It is arguably a failure of the organization that it did not use its World Health Assembly to promote a unified vaccine certificate system that could be used for international travel. Such a system would allow member states to recognize all of the vaccines in the WHO’s COVID-19 vaccine tracker as acceptable for border entry.
There are valid arguments to support a country’s requirement that visitors be inoculated before arrival, but there seems to be little case for requiring only certain brands of vaccines. Countries can choose not to inoculate their public with certain brands, but they could recognize those vaccines for border entry.
An op-ed published by the Taipei Times on Tuesday last week discussed the issue of those working in other countries being unable to return home due to getting a vaccine that is not recognized in their home country. Such an issue, along with others like the lack of international uniformity in vaccine certificates, could be solved at once if WHO member countries could agree on a universal vaccine recognition and certification system for international travel.
As it stands, international travel is only possible due to machine-readable passports that follow standards outlined by the International Civil Aviation Organization. There has been resistance to the idea of a “vaccine passport,” but if countries already have vaccine requirements for entry, then such a universal passport could make travel easier. In fact, vaccination status could be added to existing biometric passports, which are already in use in 150 countries.
Taiwan might not be a member of the WHO, but it could communicate with friendly nations like the US, France, Canada, Australia and other countries that are in the WHO on the possibility of a universal vaccine certificate, and wider recognition of vaccine brands for border entry.
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