Countries will accept validity of all vaccines 'eventually', says Dubai Airports chief

Passengers with unapproved vaccines could find it harder to enter some countries in the short term, but a global acceptance of vaccines will eventually be agreed upon, said Dubai Airports CE Paul Griffiths. Health passports will probably become "ubiquitous” and “mandated by individual countries”, while passenger volumes are not expected to return to 2019 levels until we have the data to show how much the vaccine will slow the transmission of Covid-19, he said. Several travel organisations and airline chief executives have spoken recently about the possible introduction of vaccine passports to accelerate the opening of borders. Griffiths said he expected passengers to start to carry a digital health record. He praised the Travel Pass scheme being introduced by industry body the International Air Transport Association (Iata). “Vaccine passports are a very good thing. What needs to happen is the health authorities around the world need to agree on common standards so that we've got proper interchangeability. The Iata system is a token-based system which will allow that interoperability between all of the different health systems. So I think it's a great step in the right direction,” he said.<br/>