Tag Archives: COVID-19

COVID-19 vaccine chasers hunt, wait and hope in Los Angeles

By Norma Galeana

SANTA FE SPRINGS, Calif. (Reuters) – Jose Luis Espinoza had been chasing a COVID-19 vaccine for more than three weeks.

He hadn’t hugged his 98-year-old father in a long time, and was hoping a vaccine would change that. Last week, he struck gold in Santa Fe Springs.

“It was the last dose they gave, and I was the lucky one,” the 68-year-old said.

The chase for leftover vaccine doses is widespread and competitive in Los Angeles. The wait can last for hours outside a clinic or vaccination site, and most people are turned away without a shot.

Clinics have leftover doses when people cancel their appointments at the last minute or don’t show up. Once opened, vaccine vials have an expiry date: 5 days for the Pfizer vaccine and 30 days for the Moderna one.

“We need to make sure if we’re going to pull out that vaccine, that we have the people signed up and the resources and the event scheduled,” said Will Baker, clinic manager for private ambulance service CARE Ambulance, stressing the importance of not wasting any of the precious doses.

‘NEVER GUARANTEED’

Vaccine chasers have been criticized for getting doses when it’s not their turn, perhaps taking it away from someone who might need it more.

“I’m here in the hope that there’s some that might be left over,” said Cynthia Perez, 48, the first to arrive when the Santa Fe Springs clinic opened at 2:00pm.

“So I’m not trying to jump the line. I’m just trying to take advantage of any vaccines or any doses that might be thrown away,” she said.

Perez said she had a child with asthma, and was in ill-health herself, adding, “I’m trying to get ahead of the curve a bit and stay healthy.”

As the evening wore on, the line of chasers outside the clinic grew, and Baker took down their details. Throughout the day, he counted the doses left at each vaccine station, revised the list of appointments, and did the math.

When the clinic closed at 6 p.m., and there was a single shot left over, he called Espinoza’s name.

“I went over the guidelines and I looked for anyone in the line that was 1A,” Baker explained, referring to the first category of vaccine allocation as recommended by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“We did have one person in the line that met the 1A criteria and we were able to get him a vaccine today,” he said.

Then Baker went outside and told the rest of the line there were no more doses for the day, apologizing and thanking everyone for their patience.

Perez picked up her bag and headed home, disappointed but not deterred.

“You can’t be upset. It’s never guaranteed,” she said.

(Reporting by Norma Galeana; Editing by Sandra Stojanovic, Karishma Singh and Gerry Doyle)

Biden believes U.S. teachers are priority for vaccinations, White House says

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Joe Biden believes America’s teachers should be a priority in getting vaccinated against the coronavirus, but he will listen to scientists’ recommendations on a comprehensive approach to reopening schools, the White House said on Tuesday.

“He believes that teachers should be a priority on the vaccination list – he has supported that,” White House Communications Director Kate Bedingfield said in an interview with MSNBC.

“He believes that teachers should get their vaccines, but he’s listening to the science, and there are a number of important steps that we need to take to ensure that schools can open and open safely,” she said. “Vaccines are one piece of it.”

Official guidance for reopening American schools will likely come later in the week from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Bedingfield said.

School reopenings have become a hot topic across the nation. District officials, teachers, parents and health professionals have been debating when and how to safely reopen for millions of students who have been taking classes remotely for 11 months since the pandemic closed schools last spring.

Educators in major cities, including Chicago and Philadelphia, on Monday called for strong COVID-19 safety protocols in their classrooms as those and other districts pushed to reopen.

“There are a number of important steps that we need to take to ensure that schools can open and open safely. Vaccines are one piece of it,” Bedingfield said. “There needs to be masking, there needs to be room for social distancing, so those mitigation measures are just as important.”

(Reporting by Doina Chiacu; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Jonathan Oatis)

COVID may have taken ‘convoluted path’ to Wuhan, WHO team leader says

By Josh Horwitz and David Stanway

WUHAN, China (Reuters) – The head of a World Health Organization-led team probing the origins of COVID-19 said bats remain a likely source and that transmission of the virus via frozen food is a possibility that warrants further investigation, but he ruled out a lab leak.

Peter Ben Embarek, who led the team of independent experts in its nearly month-long visit to the Chinese city of Wuhan, where the outbreak first emerged at a seafood market in late 2019, said the team’s work had uncovered new information but had not dramatically changed their picture of the outbreak.

“The possible path from whatever original animal species all the way through to the Huanan market could have taken a very long and convoluted path involving also movements across borders,” Embarek told a nearly three-hour media briefing.

Embarek said work to identify the coronavirus’s origins points to a natural reservoir in bats, but it is unlikely that they were in Wuhan.

Investigators were also looking for Chinese blood samples that could indicate that the virus was circulating earlier than first thought, he said.

“In trying to understand the picture of December 2019 we embarked on a very detailed and profound search for other cases that may have been missed, cases earlier on in 2019,” he said.

“And the conclusion was we did not find evidence of large outbreaks that could be related to cases of COVID-19 prior to December 2019 in Wuhan or elsewhere.”

The possibility the virus leaked from a lab – which has been the subject of conspiracy theories – was extremely unlikely and did not require further study, Embarek said.

Liang Wannian, head of China’s expert panel on the outbreak, said there was evidence of coronavirus infections that could have preceded the first detected case by “several weeks”.

“This suggests that we cannot rule out that it was circulating in other regions and the circulation was unreported,” he told the briefing.

FROZEN ANIMALS?

Embarek said the team had identified market vendors selling frozen animal products including farmed wild animals.

“So there is the potential to continue to follow this lead and further look at the supply chain and animals that were supplied to the market,” he said.

China has pushed the idea that the virus can be transmitted by frozen food and has repeatedly announced findings of coronavirus traces on imported food packaging.

“We know the virus can survive in conditions that are found in these cold, frozen environments, but we don’t really understand if the virus can transmit to humans” or under which conditions, Embarek told the briefing.

The team arrived in Wuhan on Jan. 14 and after two weeks of quarantine, visited key sites including the Huanan seafood market, the location of the first known cluster of infections, as well as the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which has been involved in coronavirus research.

Members of the team sought to rein in expectations for the mission, with infectious disease expert Dominic Dwyer saying it would probably take years to fully understand the origins of COVID-19.

The United States said China needed to be more open when it comes to sharing data and samples as well as allowing access to patients, medical staff and lab workers. Beijing subsequently accused Washington of politicizing a scientific mission.

(Reporting by Josh Horwitz in Wuhan and David Stanway in Shanghai; Additional reporting by Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; Writing by Tony Munroe; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan, Gareth Jones and Nick Macfie)

U.S. educators wrangle over school re-opening

By Brendan O’Brien and Barbara Goldberg

(Reuters) – Educators in major cities including Chicago and Philadelphia on Monday called for strong COVID-19 safety protocols in their classrooms as those and other districts pushed to re-open schools that have been closed for nearly a year.

Across the nation, school reopenings have become a red-hot topic. District officials, teachers, parents and health professionals have been debating when and how to safely re-open schools for millions of students who have been taking classes remotely for 11 months since the pandemic closed schools last spring.

In Chicago, the powerful Chicago Teachers Union was considering the school district’s proposed COVID-19 safety plan that would allow schools to begin re-opening this week. In Philadelphia, educators won an agreement to allow a mediator to decide when in-person learning could safely resume.

If approved, the agreement with Chicago Public Schools, the third largest U.S. district, would avert a threatened lock out by the district, or strike by teachers who demanded stronger safety protocols to prevent the spread of the virus in classrooms.

A deal would allow for some 67,000 students to gradually return into school buildings over the next month, starting with pre-kindergarten and special education pupils later this week.

The union’s leadership is expected to decide on Monday night whether to send its 28,000 rank and file members the district’s safety plan to for a vote on Tuesday.

In Philadelphia, the teachers union succeeded late on Sunday in reversing a district order to return some 2,000 pre-kindergarten through second grade teachers to their classrooms on Monday to prepare for students coming back on Feb. 22.

“There is a lot of uncertainty about the process of re-opening,” said Pennsylvania State Senator Nikil Saval on a Twitter video as he protested with Philadelphia teachers outside his child’s school. “We want an eventual return to schools but only when it is safe … for teachers and students.”

The Philadelphia Federation of Teachers on Twitter cheered the city’s concession to allow an independent arbitrator to decide when the district can safely resume in-person teaching.

“The mediation process is still ongoing,” the union said on Twitter.

U.S. President Joe Biden on Sunday addressed the issue on Sunday, describing school closures and their negative impact on families as a national emergency.

During a Super Bowl interview on CBS, Biden said it was time for schools to reopen if they can do it safely, with fewer people in classrooms and proper ventilation.

“I think about the price so many of my grandkids and … kids are going to pay for not having had the chance to finish whatever it was,” he said. “They are going for a lot, these kids.”

Leading health organizations, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, have said there is little evidence that schools contribute to the spread of the virus, which has killed more than 460,000 people in the United States since the pandemic began.

In Michigan, more than 350 physicians and psychologists signed a letter to Ann Arbor Schools officials urging the resumption of in-person classes by March 1. They warned of the “harmful impact of delayed school reopening on our community.”

Dr. Kim Monroe, a pediatrician who helped organize the Michigan effort, told radio station WEMU, “We are seeing so much mental illness in children due to the virtual schooling.”

A gradual re-opening unfolded in Atlanta when third through fifth grade students went back to school on Monday after prekindergarten through second grade returned to schools on Jan. 25.

In New York City, in-person classes in the nation’s largest school system will resume for middle school students on Feb. 25. About half of the public school system’s 471 middle schools will offer five-day-a-week classroom learning with the remainder working toward that goal, Mayor Bill de Blasio and Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza said at a press briefing.

“If we’re in an environment where the city is overwhelmingly vaccinated, we’re able to bring school back as it was. Same physical proportions. Same number of kids in classrooms,” De Blasio said, adding he hopes to have all schools back to full-time in-person learning in the fall.

(Reporting by Brendan O’Brien in Chicago and Barbara Goldberg in Maplewood, New Jersey; Editing by David Gregorio)

U.S. COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations log biggest weekly drops since pandemic started

(Reuters) – The United States reported a 25% drop in new cases of COVID-19 to about 825,000 last week, the biggest fall since the pandemic started, although health officials said they were worried new variants of the virus could slow or reverse this progress.

New cases of the virus have now fallen for four weeks in a row to the lowest level since early November, according to a Reuters analysis of state and county reports. The steepest drop was in California, where cases in the week ended Feb. 7 fell 48%. Only Oregon, Puerto Rico, Arkansas and Vermont saw cases rise.

At least three new variants of the novel coronavirus are circulating in the United States, including the UK variant B.1.1.7 that is 30% to 40% more contagious, according to researchers.

“I’m asking everyone to please keep your guard up,” Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said on Monday. “The continued proliferation of variants remains a great concern and is a threat that could reverse the recent positive trends we are seeing.”

The average number of COVID-19 patients in hospitals fell by 15% to 88,000 last week, also a record percentage drop, according to a Reuters analysis of data from the volunteer-run COVID Tracking Project. It was the lowest average number in hospitals since late November.

Death fell 2.5% last week to 22,193. Excluding a backlog of deaths reported by Indiana, fatalities were down 9.5% last week. Deaths are a lagging indicator and usually fall several weeks after cases and hospitalizations drop.

Cumulatively, nearly 464,000 people have died from the virus in the United States, or one in every 704 residents.

Nationally, 7.3% of tests of tests came back positive for the virus, down from 8.5% the prior week, according to data from the COVID Tracking Project.

(Graphic by Chris Canipe, writing by Lisa Shumaker, editing by Tiffany Wu)

Governments support AstraZeneca shot after South Africa halts roll-out

By Guy Faulconbridge and Kate Holton

LONDON (Reuters) – Western governments rushed to offer support for the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccination after South Africa halted its roll-out when research showed it offered minimal protection against mild infection from a variant spreading there.

The arrival of vaccines has given hope that scientists can tame a pandemic that has killed 2.3 million people worldwide. But if vaccines are less effective against new variants, they may need to be tweaked and people may need booster shots.

South Africa announced its pause after researchers from the University of Witwatersrand and the University of Oxford found that the AstraZeneca vaccine provided only minimal protection against mild or moderate infection from the B.1.351 variant, now the dominant form of the virus in that country.

The research is not yet peer reviewed and did not provide data on older people most likely to die or need hospitalization. There was no data on whether the vaccine would prevent severe illness, and researchers said that was still possible.

“This study confirms that the pandemic coronavirus will find ways to continue to spread in vaccinated populations, as expected,” said Andrew Pollard, chief investigator on the Oxford vaccine trial.

“But, taken with the promising results from other studies in South Africa using a similar viral vector, vaccines may continue to ease the toll on health care systems by preventing severe disease.”

SERIOUS INFECTIONS

French Health Minister Olivier Veran voiced support for the AstraZeneca vaccine, arguing it provided sufficient protection against “nearly all the variants” of the virus.

German Health Minister Jens Spahn said current evidence suggests all three vaccines approved in Europe – which include AstraZeneca – provided effective protection against serious infections.

Britain and Australia urged calm, citing evidence that the vaccines prevented grave illness and death, while AstraZeneca said it believed its vaccine could protect against severe disease.

“We think that both the vaccines that we’re currently using are effective in, as I say, in stopping serious disease and death,” British Prime Minister Boris Johnson told reporters. Britain also uses the Pfizer shot.

“We also think in particular in the case of the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine that there’s good evidence that it is stopping transmission, as well, I think 67% reduction in transmission.”

Australia is expected approve the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine within days and expressed confidence in it.

“There is currently no evidence to indicate a reduction in the effectiveness of either the AstraZeneca or Pfizer vaccines in preventing severe disease and death. That is the fundamental task, to protect the health,” Health Minister Greg Hunt said.

But if vaccines do not work as effectively as hoped against new and emerging variants, then the world could be facing a much longer – and more expensive – battle against the virus than previously thought.

The AstraZeneca vaccine was the big hope for Africa as it is cheap and easy to store and transport. South Africa, which had hoped to roll out the AstraZeneca shot this month, is storing around 1 million doses it has received from the Serum Institute of India.

The B.1.351 variant dominant in South Africa, also known as 20I/501Y.V2, is also circulating in at least 40 other countries, including the United States. Other major variants include one first found in Britain, known as 20I/501Y.V1, and one found in Brazil known as P.1.

Austria warned against non-essential travel to its Alpine province of Tyrol because of an outbreak of the South African variant there. Cases were also detected north of Paris, forcing one school to close.

VACCINE SHOCK

An analysis of infections by the South African variant showed there was only a 22% lower risk of developing mild-to-moderate COVID-19, more than 14 days after being vaccinated with the AstraZeneca shot, versus those given a placebo.

Protection against moderate-severe disease, hospitalization or death could not be assessed in the study of around 2,000 volunteers who had a median age of 31, as the target population were at such low risk.

Professor Shabir Madhi, lead investigator on the AstraZeneca trial in South Africa, said the vaccine’s similarity to another produced by Johnson & Johnson, which reduced severe disease by 85%, suggested it would still prevent serious illness or death.

“There’s still some hope that the AstraZeneca vaccine might well perform as well as the Johnson & Johnson vaccine in a different age group demographic that I address of severe disease,” he told BBC radio.

Sarah Gilbert, professor of vaccinology at the University of Oxford, said efforts were under way to develop a new generation of booster shot vaccines that will allow protection against emerging variants.

“This is the same issue that is faced by all of the vaccine developers, and we will continue to monitor the emergence of new variants that arise in readiness for a future strain change.”

(Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge and Kate Holton; editing by Michael Holden, Angus MacSwan, Nick Macfie and Giles Elgood)

Pentagon to deploy 1,100 troops to help COVID-19 vaccination efforts

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Joe Biden’s administration on Friday announced that the Pentagon had approved the deployment of 1,100 active-duty troops to assist with COVID-19 vaccination efforts in the United States, a number likely to rise in the coming weeks and months.

The pandemic has killed more than 447,000 Americans and thrown millions out of work.

Andy Slavitt, senior adviser to the White House’s COVID-19 response team, said in a briefing that part of the group would start to arrive in California within the next 10 days.

The Pentagon said the 1,110 troops would be broken down into five teams, each with vaccinators, nurses and clinical staff.

The deployment is likely just the first tranche of U.S. military personnel assisting in administering vaccinations around the country.

White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain last week said the Federal Emergency Management Agency was working with the Pentagon to use 10,000 troops and open 100 centers across the country to increase the availability of vaccines.

Using the military to fight the coronavirus is not new. At its peak under former President Donald Trump, more than 47,000 National Guard troops were supporting COVID-19 operations and about 20,000 continue to help.

The Army Corps of Engineers has also built thousands of rooms across the country to assist hospitals with the strain caused by the spread of the coronavirus.

(Reporting by Idrees Ali; Editing by Dan Grebler)

Biden’s immense economic challenge: Putting 10 million people back to work

By Jonnelle Marte

(Reuters) – President Joe Biden is presenting his plan on Friday for addressing one of the greatest challenges created by the COVID-19 pandemic – how to get millions of out-of-work Americans back on the job.

The labor market regained some minor ground in January when the economy added 49,000 jobs, according to a report released Friday by the Labor Department. But the report showed labor market growth is stalling, doing little to close the huge gap created by the pandemic

“At that rate it’s going to take 10 years before we get to full employment,” Biden said Friday morning from the White House.

Roughly half of the 22 million jobs lost at the height of the pandemic have been recouped. But that still leaves a hole of about 10 million jobs, disproportionately ones held by women and minorities in low-wage roles.

Here is a look at the people who may need the most help as the economy heals:

MINORITIES HIT HARDEST

As the economy reopened last year from widespread shutdowns, many office workers adjusted to working remotely and other industries called people back to their jobs.

But many Black, Hispanic and Asian workers who were overrepresented in the low-wage occupations most affected by the pandemic, including servers, bartenders, cooks and housekeepers, are still unemployed.

The overall unemployment rate dropped to 6.3% in January. But within that rate are huge racial disparities – over 9% of Black workers are unemployed, versus less than 6% of white workers:

WOMEN PUSHED OUT

Before the pandemic, the share of women either working or looking for work was rising, thanks to a record-long economic expansion.

The crisis reversed those gains, in part because the closures of schools and child care centers left working mothers with a weaker support system.

Some 2.5 million woman dropped out of the labor force during the pandemic, compared to 1.8 million men, according to data from the Labor Department.

Biden says he wants to help more women get back to work through policies that reopen schools safely and make childcare more affordable.

SECTOR BY SECTOR

Businesses that rely on travel or on people spending time close to each other indoors have rebounded the slowest, and many people who made their living by staffing kitchens, mixing drinks or cleaning hotel rooms are still out of work.

Employment in leisure and hospitality was down 23% in January from pre-pandemic levels in February 2020, more than any other industry.

Economists expect many of those jobs to return after coronavirus vaccines are distributed widely and consumers feel more comfortable spending money in restaurants, bars and other entertainment venues. But it’s not clear whether employment will return completely to previous levels.

LONG-TERM UNEMPLOYED

Job searches have stretched on for some people, including many in the leisure and hospitality industry.

The “long-term unemployed,” or those who have been out of work for at least six months, now make up about 40% of the total unemployed, or about 4 million people, up from about 20% before the pandemic.

Research shows people who are long-term unemployed can have a harder time finding new jobs, putting them at greater risk of facing pay cuts or of dropping out of the labor market.

Biden wants to create federally subsidized jobs in healthcare, clean energy and other fields that could help the long-term unemployed move into new roles.

ACROSS THE MAP

Designing federal policies to help the out of work may be especially challenging because job losses vary widely from one state to the next.

Employment in Idaho, Utah and Kansas had fully recovered to pre-pandemic levels by December. But the situation was more dire in New York and tourism-dependent Nevada and Hawaii.

This could lead to wide disagreements among lawmakers about how much more aid is needed to nurse the economy, and the labor market, back to health.

(Reporting by Jonnelle Marte; Additional reporting by Howard Schneider. Editing by Heather Timmons and Andrea Ricci)

One U.S. company’s risky effort to build a new mask factory during COVID

By Timothy Aeppel

LA VERNE, Calif. (Reuters) – Dan Izhaky is betting $4 million that the pandemic will change what Americans are willing to pay for high quality face masks from his new factory here in this suburb of Los Angeles.

It’s a risky wager.

Before COVID-19 hit, the United States imported much of the personal protection equipment needed by health care providers, mainly from Asia. Some U.S. companies pivoted in the crisis, such as liquor companies churning out hand sanitizer and plastics firms making face shields.

But one item that remains in tight supply is N95 face masks, which provide a high level of filtration against airborne contaminants and are closely regulated by the U.S. government.

Izhaky is president of United Safety Technology Inc, a startup that is poised to open a new N95 mask factory possibly within weeks. While the plant is still being fitted with machinery, his goal is to make 1 million masks a day when it’s up and running. Izhaky said if they get approval from regulators soon, the plant could be shipping that amount by the end of the second quarter.

“The big question we face is what happens post-pandemic,” said Izhaky, “when you have a hospital administrator or whoever it is that’s in charge of purchasing” and looking at U.S.-made masks that cost more. The pricing of many types of protective equipment remain elevated by shortages, but once the market normalizes Izhaky estimates his masks will cost about 30% more than Chinese masks, or about $1.15 each.

Other domestic producers are likely to face the same challenge, including industry giants Izhaky will compete with. 3M Co has quadrupled its domestic production of N95 masks since the start of the pandemic, expanding a factory in South Dakota and hiring 300 workers and now makes nearly 100 million masks in the U.S. a month. Honeywell International Inc has opened “multiple new locations in the Phoenix area” to make N95 masks, said spokesman Eric Krantz, and converted a significant portion of a factory in Rhode Island that also makes safety glasses.

Krantz said Honeywell doesn’t view the expansion as a risk.

“We’re confident there will be continued demand for high-quality respiratory protection products,” he said in an email. “We’ve made smart, strategic investments in expanding our N95 production.”

But many smaller producers aren’t so sure.

“China subsidizes their face masks,” so every producer faces a challenge in competing with China after the pandemic, said Vitali Servutas, CEO of AmeriShield, which built a factory that makes single-use surgical masks, not N95 masks, in Virginia last year in response to the crisis.

Izhaky hopes, but is not certain, that the pandemic will make Americans more willing to pay a premium, or that U.S. government policy will mandate more domestic sourcing which would benefit his venture. Actions by the incoming administration of President Joe Biden, including an executive order aimed at increasing the production of a wide range of goods in domestic factories through Buy American programs, have made him more optimistic.

David Sanford, the brigadier general who directs the supply chain advisory group at the Department of Health and Human Services working on COVID-19 response, has been helping Izhaky and other manufacturers work through the process of getting certified and connected to domestic distributors of medical goods. He said Izhaky’s new factory is exactly the kind of project the U.S. needs to encourage.

“But there’s always a risk,” said Sanford. He adds there are ways the government can support businesses like this, short of giving direct government contracts to purchase goods at higher prices. A requirement to buy U.S.-made protective equipment could be built into Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements, for instance.

Making masks isn’t that hard. The process is highly automated and doesn’t require a costly cleanroom. But getting a dependable supply of the materials, particularly the specialized layers of filtration material that makes them effective, is a challenge.

“You can buy a face mask machine for a few hundred thousand dollars and start it up in 90 days. That’s happening all over the world,” said Sara Greenstein, CEO of Lydall Inc, a U.S. producer of the material that has agreed to supply Izhaky’s operation.

Lydall, aided by federal funds provided early in the crisis, has nearly tripled capacity at its one U.S. plant capable of making the material. With competing Chinese material expected to continue to sell at much lower prices after the pandemic, Lydall CEO Greenstein has “high confidence” there will be government-led programs in the United States and Europe “to buy product made here to help keep that supply chain stable and competitive.”

At the United Safety Technology plant in La Verne, engineers are busy fine tuning the first of the machines that will eventually turn out cup-shaped masks.

Edward Zheng, Izhaky’s partner in the venture, said their goal is to source all the materials domestically, with a key exception: the machines that make the masks in the factory are imported from China.

(Reporting by Timothy Aeppel; editing by Dan Burns and Edward Tobin)

Vaccine passports: path back to normality or problem in the making?

By Natalie Thomas

LONDON (Reuters) – Governments and developers around the world are exploring the potential use of “vaccine passports” as a way of reopening the economy by identifying those protected against the coronavirus.

Those developing the technologies however, say such tools come with consequences such as potentially excluding whole groups from social participation, and are urging lawmakers to think seriously about how they are used.

The travel and entertainment industries, which have struggled to operate at a profit while imposing social distancing regulations, are particularly interested in a way of swiftly checking who has protection.

Among those developing passports are biometrics company iProov and cyber security firm Mvine which have built a vaccine pass now being tested within Britain’s National Health Service after receiving UK government funding.

iProov founder and chief executive Andrew Bud believes such vaccine passports only really need to hold two pieces of information.

“One is, has this person been vaccinated? And the other is, what does this person look like?”

You need only match a face to a vaccination status, you don’t need to know a person’s identity, he added.

Confirmation of patrons’ vaccination status could help the night-time economy, which employs some 420,000 people in the northern English city of Manchester, off its knees, experts say.

“We have to look at how to get back to normal,” said Sacha Lord, an industry adviser and co-founder of the city’s Parklife music festival.

While there have been experiments in socially distanced concerts and events over the last year, they weren’t financially viable, he said.

“A gig isn’t a gig or a festival isn’t a festival unless you are stood shoulder to shoulder with your friends.

“I don’t think we should be forcing people into the vaccine passports. It should be a choice. But on entry, if you don’t have that passport, then we will give you another option,” he added, suggesting the use of rapid result coronavirus tests.

Bud said vaccine certificates were being rolled out in some countries, and in the United Sates, some private sector health passes were being used to admit customers to sports events.

“I think vaccine certificates raise huge social and political issues. Our job is to provide the technology basis for making vaccine passports and certificates possible … It is not our place to make judgments about whether they are a good idea or not,” he said.

Potential issues could arise around discrimination, privilege and exclusion of the younger generation who would be last in line to be vaccinated, he said, adding he believed government was giving it careful consideration.

(Reporting by Natalie Thomas; Writing by Alexandra Hudson; Editing by Mike Collett-White)