Covid vaccine passport plan axed by Boris Johnson

England has ditched plans for a Covid-19 vaccine passport after a fierce public backlash against ‘showing papers to do basic things’.

The British health minister says the country will not be imposing a Covid-19 ‘vaccine passport’ system to verify vaccination status at concerts, nightclubs and other venues. Picture: Hollie Adams / Getty Images

England has ditched plans for a Covid-19 vaccine passport after a fierce public backlash against “showing papers to do basic things’’.

The country will also wind back other coronavirus countermeasures such as travel tests for vaccinated travellers as the country learns to live with the coronavirus now that all adults have been offered a vaccine.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is to this week lay out a more relaxed Covid strategy despite the approaching winter after 89 per cent of adults have had their first jab and more than 80 per cent are fully vaccinated.

The country is now offering 16 and 17 year olds the vaccine.

Health Secretary Sajid Javid said previous plans for a vaccine passport to enter large venues such as concerts and nightclubs had now been abandoned.

“I’ve never liked the idea of saying to people you must show your papers or something to do what is just an everyday activity, but we were right to properly look at it,’’ Mr Javid told the BBC late on Sunday (local time). “Instinctively I don’t like the idea at all of people having to, let’s say, present papers to do basic things.’’

He said such a passport scheme wasn’t needed because there were other defences in place, such as including high vaccine uptake and new treatments. When the plan to impose from the end of the month such a passport was presented to parliament last Wednesday there was an uproar about the loss of personal freedoms and civil liberties.

Liberal Democrats leader Ed Davey had rejected such passports as divisive, unworkable and expensive and the nightclub industry said it would be chaotic.

MPs had been lobbied by constituents, likening it to a return of checkpoint permits required during World War II.

However, the Scottish government has continued with its plans to impose the vaccine passport for people entering large venues.

Scotland’s Health Secretary Humza Yousaf admitted that the scheme was designed to encourage reluctant younger people to get vaccinated. About 25 per cent of Scottish people aged 18 to 29 have not yet taken up the offer of vaccination.

“We know the uptake is lower amongst the younger age cohorts and therefore anything that helps to incentivise that is helpful,” Mr Yousaf said.

Wales and Northern Ireland have yet to announce if they will adopt a vaccine passport.

Mr Javid said that pending the country’s advice from chief medical officers, Covid vaccination could be offered across the ­nation to children aged 12 to 15 “within a week”.

The Conservative government is also looking to scale back the traffic-light travel system, abandoning requirements for arrivals from an “amber’’ country to undergo Covid testing before getting on a plane and then again upon arrival into Britain. The number of countries on the red list, requiring arrivals to quarantine for 10 days in a hotel, is also set to be reduced. Mr Javid said he wanted to get rid of polymerase chain reaction tests for travel.

He also said he was not anticipating any more lockdowns.

Mr Javid said emergency powers granted during the pandemic would be repealed, including the ability to shut down businesses and schools. “We don’t need them, we should get rid of them,” he told Times Radio.

Much of the country has already ditched mask wearing, even when advised to do so, and social distancing was abandoned weeks ago. Covid case numbers are still high – sometimes as many as 30,000 a day or more – but the number of people being hospitalised and dying with the virus has plummeted. There also doesn’t appear to have been a surge after schools returned from the summer holidays. On Sunday, 56 people died compared to daily deaths of more than 1200 at the peak of the pandemic in January.

Denmark has abandoned its vaccine passport which had been in place for several months, as the last part of its freedom rules. Denmark now has no coronavirus-­related restrictions in place, as vaccine rates have surpassed more than 70 per cent.

But in France, a vaccine passport is now needed to enter restaurants and bars that hold more than 50 people, as well as on planes and trains.