COVID-19 Vaccine Set to Become World’s Most Powerful ‘Passport’ in 2021
Posted date: 23 Jul 2021
Almost a month after the European Union approved the first safe and effective vaccine against COVID-19 developed by BioNTech and Pfizer, thousands of Europeans have taken at least their first jab of the COVID-19 vaccine.
Other world countries, including Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain have started vaccinating their citizens, while others are set to roll out vaccines soon.
With millions of vaccines already purchased and agreements on their purchase on the way, the world is set become COVID-19 immune by 2023, by which time, many hope life will return back to how it was before the pandemic outbreak.
Within less than a year, the pandemic has shocked the economies of the majority of world countries, and brought many industries to their knees, including the travel and tourism industry, which for many countries has been a powerful contributor to their economies.
If vaccination becomes a requirement for EU citizens to travel to fellow EU countries, and for third-country nationals to travel to the Schengen Area, then several things are set to take place.
First, if the EU obliges travellers to vaccinate, even if travellers who are not vaccinated find a loophole in the requirement and manage to enter the EU territory, travel insurance providers may refuse to cover them.
Representatives of several travel insurance providers confirmed last December for SchengenVisaInfo.com that if the EU makes vaccination mandatory for travellers to be eligible to enter its territory, they will update their policies in compliance with the EU regulations, which means they would refuse coverage to those who have not taken the vaccine.
Second, travellers from third countries, which have failed to secure vaccines so far, and whose population will get the vaccines, maybe at the end of the year, or next year, will practically be banned from entering Europe.
Moreover, as the majority of world countries plan to complete vaccination for their whole population only somewhere in 2022, this means that travel and tourism industries will fail to start its gradual return to pre-pandemic levels until everyone is vaccinated, which may take quite some time.
Posted By
GSP Admin
