“Vaccine passports” for international travel could be considered as an option to allow further easing of Scotland’s lockdown restrictions.
Speaking in Parliament, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said she is keeping an open mind to the idea of introducing vaccination certificates if they can “give us greater normality”.
Ms Sturgeon made the announcement as she set out a roadmap for the country to gradually come out of lockdown over the next two months.
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Although members of parliament raised concerns that “vaccine passports” could make social inequalities “even worse”, the first minster said every option is worth considering.
However, Ms Sturgeon stressed that such a decision is “not straightforward” and she would “never support something that deepened social inequalities, or put barriers in the way of people accessing public services”.
She said: “We need to, firstly, understand exactly what vaccination gives you, in terms of protection against or passing on the virus.
“And then we do need to think about these ethical issues, about what is it reasonable to say can be accessed with a vaccine certificate, if you had that, and what couldn’t.
“Because there are some people who, for reasons beyond their own control, can’t get vaccinated, and there are other ethical issues that arise from this.
“I don’t close my mind to this, but I think, like everybody else, we want to think through this carefully.
“And if some kind of mechanism like this can give us some greater normality back at some stage that we wouldn’t otherwise get, then let’s think about that.”
