Colorado Vaccine Passports? An Overwhelming No From Patch Readers

COLORADO — An overwhelming majority of Colorado Patch readers are against the idea of a statewide vaccine passport — a kind of digital credential that would show a person's vaccination status or recent negative test of COVID-19 as a way for them to possibly attend sporting events or enter businesses.

As more and more people are vaccinated against COVID-19, the idea of a vaccine passport has been in the public discourse and states are taking steps to either explore the idea or reject it altogether. In Colorado, state public health officials said they are looking at the possibility of a vaccine passport program, but as of Friday, no decisions had been made.

Patch received nearly 1,300 responses to our survey with 80.5 percent of respondents saying they opposed the idea of a vaccine passport. A majority of those respondents said they had data privacy concerns around the use of such a credential. When asked about the specific types of concerns they had, readers said they should be able to keep medical information private.

The survey is not a scientific poll, with random sampling and weighting by race education or other factors, but should be viewed as a broad gauge of public sentiment.

Many readers cited HIPAA and claimed it would be violation of the law to require a vaccine passport. However, a fact check of this claim makes it clear that is not the case. The law's privacy rule applies to covered entities like doctors and prevents them from sharing medical information with third parties, as The Washington Post explained.

"HIPAA doesn’t apply if nobody involved is part of the medical system; it’s not technically a medical record," Carmel Shachar, a Harvard Law lecturer, told Slate in December.

A fact-check by Atlanta-based news outlet 11Alive also found that an individual voluntarily sharing medical information is consenting to let that information be shared.

That's not to say there aren't legitimate privacy concerns around the use of a vaccine passport, as digital data breaches are now common.

The 19.5 percent of respondents who said they supported a vaccine passport shared some of the settings where they felt such a passport could be used. Below is a sampling of the locations:

• Air travel
• Large events
• Sports
• Concerts
• Any public activity with 20 or more people
• Any place you will be in close proximity to others or where you may have your mask off, for example to eat or drink.
• Ticket events. Especially indoors.
• Cruise ships
• Public transportation

The vast majority (94 percent) of those in favor of the passport also said they did not have data privacy concerns around the use of such a passport.

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"Safety trumps privacy in this case," one respondent said.

"Our driver's license and passports already have much more information about us than a card that says we have had a vaccine," another reader said.

"Key is to use the most current security, integrity, and privacy techniques," one person said. "Examples are blockchain, and methods like ApplePay, and Colorado's own COVID-19 notification app."

Most readers (nearly 97.3 percent) who were opposed to the idea of a vaccine passport said they did not believe residents should have to show proof of vaccination. When it came to letting private businesses and employers put their own policies in place, a smaller yet still overwhelming majority (nearly 86 percent) of these readers, said they were opposed to it.

Those opposed to the passports were also largely against health screenings like temperature checks at restaurants and movie theaters (90.3 percent), COVID-19 vaccine requirements for domestic or international air travel (97 percent) and a majority (nearly 89.5 percent) said they would not feel safer attending an event or eating at a restaurant knowing others around them had been vaccinated for COVID-19.

"My body my choice," one person opposed to the idea of a vaccine passport said in the survey. "If people want a vaccine, go for it. If they don't ... it's THEIR CHOICE!"

"Vaccinations of any kind are a personal decision and should be private," wrote another. "People who are fearful of any contagious disease should take personal precautions to avoid it. It's called personal responsibility."

"We already know minority groups are disproportionately getting vaccinated around the country at much slower rates so requiring this passport would hurt these communities and bar them from participating in travel," another person wrote.

"A vaccine passport creates a further divide between the price ledges and those who are not. We are already seeing this between countries where clearly most of the 1st world is taken it upon themselves to ensure our citizens have access first pushing the developing world further behind us."