Armand Arton has long prophesied the death of the passport in the form of a paper booklet we carry around with us. But its demise is likely to come sooner, accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic, he says, as the race to create the first global vaccine passport gets underway. Iceland and Poland started issuing Covid-19 vaccine certificates last month. Denmark, Sweden and Estonia are hot on their heels and Israel’s “green pass” will allow its bearers to visit gyms and bars. The European race to come up with a credible vaccine passport is heating up, led by Greece.”We call them certificates not passports,” says Alex Patelis, the chief economic advisor to the Greek prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who has called for a European certificate for people vaccinated against Covid-19.”For countries such as Greece, which are dependent on tourism, it’s imperative that this issue is resolved before the summer season,” Mitsotakis wrote in a letter to the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen. The country desperately needs the tourists: A fifth of the country’s GDP comes from tourism and its economy contracted by 11.6% last year after a particularly slow summer season. Greece’s draft vaccine certificate shows what this might look like. A digital QR code can be scanned whenever someone enters the country by air, sea or rail, something that is being tested in a trial run with Cyprus and Israel. An agreement between the three countries could see certificate holders move freely between them and the U. K. could be next, according to Haris Theoharis, the Greek tourism minister. How would a vaccine certificate work? Greek authorities are quick to point out that it would not be “an obligatory requirement” for travelers to have one. Rather, anyone entering Greece with a vaccine certificate could bypass all the usual rigmarole required of non-vaccinated travelers, such as quarantining, showing negative PCR tests or filling in passenger locator forms.“Greece is working on a number of bilateral agreements with third countries to allow mutual recognition of vaccination certificates,” says Patelis. “Ultimately certificates need some sort of unique QR code,”But behind the humble QR code, there are a myriad of issues that must be resolved first, according to the Royal Society. It highlighted 12 of them in a paper published last week. “International standardisation is one of the criteria we believe essential,” says Professor Melinda Mills, director of the Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science at the University of Oxford and a lead author of the report. Security is another. “You need a really stringent and robust verification system,” says David Hollick, CEO of Logifect, one of eight companies that has received U. K. government grants to work on a digital immunity document.”Anyone can fake Israel’s vaccination certificate,” ran a recent headline in Haaretz, after flaws were found in its green card scheme.

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