Article 51NYB The Guardian view on immunity passports: an idea whose time has not come | Editorial

The Guardian view on immunity passports: an idea whose time has not come | Editorial

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Editorial
from Technology | The Guardian on (#51NYB)

A phone app seems better than a passport as a way out of the lockdown. This system will need to be temporary, installed at users' discretion and have privacy at its core

If ministers think immunity passports or wristbands are the answer to resolving the immediate coronavirus crisis, they are asking the wrong question. Such a system, if implemented, would see one group of people granted the right to retrieve the civil liberties they had lost in the lockdown, and another group hanging around at home while they waited to contract a virus that can kill those it infects.

This does not mean that serological testing (for antibodies) is unimportant. It will be vital to get a sense of how far the infection has spread, to gauge how many of us had Covid-19. The science is not clearcut. Those who had coronavirus may not have known it - or they may have been painfully aware of its murderous potential. While people with antibodies are believed to have protection from reinfection, no one is sure how long that protection will last. A passport may give people a sense of false security about the disease.

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