Does WA Need Vaccine Passports? Patch Readers Weigh In

WASHINGTON — A majority of Washington Patch readers say they 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. Washington is not currently considering any sort of vaccine passport program, but the idea has been floated in several other states.

Patch received just over 1,000 responses to our survey with 56 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.

Some 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 44 percent of respondents who said they supported a vaccine passport shared some of the settings where they felt such a passport could be used, including:

• For travel and public transportation
• At large venues
• For sporting events
• At hospitals
• For concerts
• Anywhere there is more than 500 people

The vast majority (89 percent) of those in favor of the passport also said they did not have data privacy concerns around the use of such a passport.

"Vaccine passports are not government issued documents," wrote one respondent. "They are helpful and not an issue to be concerned about, in my opinion."

"Vaccination passports would speed getting back to normal because people would have to take that step in order to move about more freely, which would decrease the rate of infections," said another.

"I don't think we need passports in all public interactions," says one respondent. "I have to take responsibility for my own health mostly. But if I'm entrusting myself with a service such as medical services or therapeutic services like massage therapist, chiropractor, hip replacement, etc, I will add vaccinated for Covid 19 as a requirement before I purchase those services."

Most readers (nearly 95 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 74 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 (70 percent), COVID-19 vaccine requirements for domestic or international air travel (89 percent) and a majority (nearly 72 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.

"This would be against our civil liberties and right to privacy," said one reader.

"Protect America’s freedoms of personal choice and each individual and family deciding what is best for them, not government control," wrote another.

"This shouldn't be treated any different than any other vaccination and whatever rules that are already in place," another person wrote.