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COVID Status Certificates As Entry Requirement Hotly Debated In The UK
Rafael Henrique/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images – In this photo illustration a symbolic COVID-19 health passport seen on a smartphone screen.
There’s much debate in the UK about what such a health passport might look like, and whether it’s compatible with the spirit of social gatherings.
The UK government just announced a series of pilot events across the country. The fact that COVID-status certification is to be trialed as part of the pilot program is cause for a lot of debate.
UK bodies representing night time and hospitality businesses have criticized the hints from government that COVID-status certification may be required in its plans for reopening the night time economies.
Trade bodies including the Night Time Industries Association (NTIA), UKHospitality (UKH), the British Beer & Pub Association (BBPA) and the British Institute of Innkeeping (BII) have stated their outrage at being “burdened with vaccine passports, over-complicated test & trace rules and an inability not able to take payments indoors at reopening.”
This represented “a triple whammy for hard-pressed publicans who have been forcibly closed for months,” a statement from the latter three bodies reads.
Professionals working in nighttime businesses feel like they’re being unfairly treated, seeing that indoor retail, for instance, is allowed to open far earlier and with hardly any restrictions in place.
Nighttime businesses, that have been working on ways of making their venues Covid-secure, enforcing distancing mandates and collecting customer data for test-and-trace purposes throughout all of last year, are now faced with “the introduction of another barrier for them to trade freely,” which “will have a major impact on their profitability,” according to a BII statement.
The sector’s frustration follows the optimism generated by the UK prime minister’s announcement of a roadmap out of lockdown, which aims at removing all restrictions on public gatherings by June 21.
LEON NEAL/POOL/AFP via Getty Images – Prime Minister Boris Johnson during his Feb. 22, press conference.
Johnson set out a four-step plan to ease coronavirus restrictions, expressing hope that life could get back to normal by the end of June.
When the government recently announced a series of pilot events, it stated that it might trial concepts for guests entering a venue to prove their COVID status.
The government’s review into COVID Status Certification, led by MP Michael Gove, “looks likely to recommend that pubs and other hospitality venues must demand immunity proof from people, to allow them to enter – with the threat of fines for venues if non-compliant. This could prevent millions of young people visiting the pub for months, unless they get themselves tested in advance,” according to the trade bodies’ joint statement.
According to The Guardian, “the review talked of certificates being used in theaters, nightclubs, sports events and festivals, and to help cut the need for social distancing in pubs and restaurants, as well as for all shops except those deemed essential.
“Under the proposals, a pass could be granted through proof of vaccination, a negative COVID test from that day or the previous day, or a test showing antibodies for coronavirus within the last 180 days. The same system would be used within the UK, and for international travel.”
If the proof of COVID status is tied to the vaccination, it will cause problems for the sector, which employs and entertains many young people not eligible for a vaccination until after the reopening date defined in the UK’s roadmap out of lockdown.
Alex Reilley, founder of Loungers, a bar and restaurant operator with 170 sites in the UK, told The Guardian that demanding COVID status certification was “undemocratic, it’s potentially incredibly discriminatory, and it is requiring a sector which has suffered immeasurable financial losses through the last 15 months to have to adhere to yet another nonsense rule in order to operate ‘as normal’.”
Simon Emeny, chief executive of pub group Fuller, Smith & Turner, told the paper, a COVID-status scheme “flies in the face of the whole ethos of a public house being one that is open to all, and it will create a superfluous potential point of conflict for our teams.”
– Liverpool’s Hot Water Comedy Club.
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Liverpool-based comedy club Hot Water, which was supposed to host the first government-approved pilot event April 16 with 300 negatively tested people seated indoors, pulled out of the pilot program after major backlash from its customer base.
A statement on the club’s Facebook page refers to the press release unveiling the pilot events sent out by the government to media on Easter Sunday: “The headlines were all about ‘vaccine passports.’
“For some reason, all trials had been bundled together under the same press release and it seemed that we were part of the vaccine passport program.
“We also happened to be the very first event of any trial in operation so, not surprisingly, the headlines mentioned ‘Hot Water Comedy Club’ and ‘The Vaccine Passport Program’ as if we were part of the program.”
Being wrongly linked to the proposals has harmed business, the club’s co-owner Paul Blair told the Guardian, emphasizing that “vaccine passports were never at any time mentioned in any of the discussions we had prior to agreeing to put on the event.”
But the damage has been done, the Facebook statement continues. In the two days following the press release announcing the pilot events, “we were subject to a hate campaign from people opposing the vaccine passport across our Facebook channel, Twitter, Instagram, emails, text messages, negative reviews, refund requests and phone calls. We have over 4,000 separate examples of negative reaction which have significantly damaged our business and brand.”
Simone Joyner/Getty Images – Music fans entering the barriers during Reading Festival 2019 at Richfield Avenue in Reading, England.
Festival promoter Melvin Benn says it’s possible to have them all tested in advance, to enable festivals to go ahead without distancing mandates in place.
One outspoken proponent of COVID-status certifications, whether based on vaccination or testing, is Melvin Benn, managing director of Festival Republic, the promoter of Reading and Leeds festivals among others.
Benn has maintained that it was possible to test an entire festival audience prior to entering the festival site since June 2020, when he published the Full Capacity Plan.
He reiterated this in a Sept. 8, 2020, parliamentary hearing on the re-opening venues at capacity. When asked whether it was practical and possible to test 200,000 people, Benn responded that self tests could be the way with an app giving staff and visitors the all-clear sign at the gate.
He now told the London Evening Standard, “I want festivals to return to our communities as soon as possible and for it to be safe for people to gather in large crowds with a mix of vaccination and testing,” adding, “COVID certification could be the answer to this, meaning large events could get back up running without social distancing.”