As global covid vaccine passports become a reality, we have to make sure they’re fair | Laura Spinney

Discrimination against those from poorer countries seems inevitable unless everyone accepts the WHO's guidelines

We have arrived at another of those moments, in this pandemic, where it's critically important that countries respect a central decision-making body rather than go their own way. The issue on the table now is the use of health certificates to regulate international travel.

Sometimes, pandemic decisions need to be made locally to reflect the local context - mask-wearing in schools is an example - but sometimes they really need to be centralised. We saw what can go wrong if they're not: for example when, in the absence of a federal policy, US states ended up bidding against each other for personal protective equipment from China.