Cabinet ministers have, however, appeared to be split over whether vaccine passports should be used outside of travel, with Boris Johnson pushing back on comments made by Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab over the weekend.
Mr Raab had said the Government had begun looking into whether vaccine passports could be used to allow people to enter pubs, shops and restaurants.
On Monday, the Prime Minister told Sky News that he did not think people would need such passports to “allow you to go to the pub, or something like that”.
He said: “I think inevitably there will be great interest in ideas like can you show that you’ve had a vaccination against Covid in the way that sometimes you have to show you’ve had a vaccination against yellow fever or other diseases in order to travel somewhere.”
However, later, Mr Johnson suggested there could be a use for rapid Covid-19 tests to reopen locations such as theatres. He said there was the possibility of “lateral flow testing, rapid testing, for those bits which are the toughest nuts to crack such as nightclubs and theatres”. He said mass vaccination, alongside this testing, “will be the route that we go down, and businesses will go down” to reopen society.
A number of vaccine passport trials are underway in the UK, with the Government having given at least £450,000 in grants to companies to develop them.
Airlines have been among the earliest to trial the kit, with British Airways, Emirates and Virgin Atlantic among those testing “digital health” passports which would contain information about vaccinations and Covid-19 test results.
