Welcome to Travel Well with Allan Wright!
In this week’s episode, Allan discusses the exciting news of two COVID-19 vaccines showing positive trial results and gives his predictions on vaccine requirements in the travel industry, and beyond, once they are readily available.
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Can’t watch the video right now? Here’s the video transcript of COVID Vaccine Requirement Predictions:
This is Allan Wright. Welcome to the Travel Well with Allan video update. Today’s subject – will a vaccine be required to travel. I know a lot of people when I ask that question their first brush response is no. How would that ever happen, especially we’ve learned a lot right now that even masks aren’t popular with a lot of the population. It seems far-fetched to think a vaccine will be required but that is something I’m going to argue against.
The good news is we have these two vaccines that are clocking in at around 95% efficacy. That’s way higher than expected, that’s way higher than for example a flu vaccine. Good news for the world, good news for travel.
We also know that vaccines are required of certain individuals right now. Think about teachers and students and medical professionals and the military. All of them are required to get vaccines. It’s a normal practice.
With this vaccine, since we’re in a pandemic and the COVID-19 virus actually kills people at too high rate. We are very likely to see other groups requiring vaccines. Think about the NBA and the NFL, how hard they’re working to keep their players and staff safe. Are they going to require a vaccine? Very likely, yes.
What about people wanting to go into an NFL stadium or an NBA arena? Very likely, yes. College sports, probably yes. What about other businesses where their workers are at risk? Restaurants? Grocery stores? Will they require vaccines? Very possibly, yes. So the vaccine is going to be a lot more widely accepted and spread than we might originally have thought it would be. That’s my prediction.
When we’re looking at travel the same thing is going to happen. We already have some countries that require vaccines of us if we want to go there. For example, yellow fever. If you’re going to a country that has yellow fever risk, you’re probably going to be required to get a vaccine before you go.
Italy right now does not let Americans in. Are they going to require a vaccine when it’s widely available before they let Americans in? My guess is that they are going to require a vaccine and it makes a lot of sense. They’re trying to keep their own population safe, right? And so I think that vaccines will become required for travel.
What about individual companies? Cruise ships? They are requiring COVID negative tests. It’s not that different to require a vaccine. How about airlines? If not entire airlines, maybe specific flights or specific routes.
Businesses are going to be doing this and there’s a really good rationale for this. Even at 95% efficacy, that means one in 20 people who get that vaccine are going to get it, and yet it won’t be effective. That means that even people getting vaccines are still at risk. So if I’m running a conference with 100 people attending and half the people don’t get vaccines and half do, out of those 50 people there are still a few that could get sick from the virus even though they got the vaccine.
If I’m running a tour with 20 people and everybody gets the vaccine, one of those people still me might be at risk and so I kind of have to keep everybody’s safety top of mind by probably requiring a vaccine to go on our tours in 2021, once that vaccine is widely available and until the COVID pandemic is gone.
You all know from listening to this that safety is clearly our number one priority. We would rather not run tours than run tours where we’re putting people at risk. And requiring a vaccine seems like a reasonable step to take to keep all of you safe when you’re traveling with us in 2021.
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What will be accepted as evidence of having been vaccinated? Will there be an international standard for such evidence?
Hi Sam, thank you for your question. We aren’t sure at this point what proof of vaccination will look like. There is talk about an app that you can show officials that will have a QR code for them to scan. But it also could be as simple as other vaccinations that are currently required for entry into certain countries where it is a paper document signed and dated by the health professional that administered you the vaccine.