Government adviser Professor Stephen Reicher warned that vaccine passports for access to the pub could be “counterproductive”.
The member of the Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours (Spi-B) told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “I don’t think that the idea of vaccine passports to get into the pub is a good idea and I think in many ways they could be counterproductive.”
He said “the notion of in effect making them (vaccines) compulsory led to anger and to lowered uptake” among those who were already hesitant, in a small survey in Israel, which is backed by other international studies.
“I think positive incentives, something that gives you something extra, is one thing. People actually aren’t adverse for vaccine passports to travel internationally. But when it comes to negative incentives, to in effect barring people from their everyday lives, from social activity, then actually they work in a very different way and people behave very negatively,” he said
“When it comes to excluding people from everyday lives things swap around. And what’s more it leads to other problems like social division.
“We’d be in a position where those communities who are less likely to get vaccinated begin to be excluded from our city centres, from social life, and that would create a whole swathe of social problems, it would destroy any sense of community which has been so positive in the pandemic.”
