What’s the point of vaccine passports?

What is the purpose of vaccine passports: to keep down infection or to try to persuade more people to get vaccinated by making life for the unvaccinated inconvenient and restricted? Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen wasn’t trying to conceal her intentions when she announced in a press conference on 8 November that vaccine passports would be reintroduced. ‘For all of you who are not vaccinated, it of course becomes more burdensome and that is also how I think it should be,’ she said. ‘In my eyes, there are no excuses to not go out and get vaccinated.’

But did her cajoling do more harm than good? A study led by Frederik Jorgensen of Arhus University suggests that while the reintroduction of vaccine passports (they had previously been abolished along with other Covid restrictions on 10 September) increased the vaccination rate, it further reduced trust in the government and healthcare authorities among people who have chosen not to have the vaccine.