Dr Scott Gottlieb said on Monday that Americans who have digital access to their Covid vaccination status will be helpful in navigating the coronavirus pandemic in the coming months.
In an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box”, the former Food and Drug Administration commissioner sought to reduce privacy issues at the heart of opposition to verification requirements.
“The whole discussion around vaccine passports has been engulfed in a lot of concern about whether it will be used to restrict people’s access to things they would otherwise do,” said Gottlieb, a Pfizer board member. of the three Covid vaccines cleared for emergency use in the US “The use case for this information is likely to allow access to things that would otherwise be restricted.”
Gottlieb pointed to visits to nursing homes or hospitals in the fall when he said he expected to see an increase in coronavirus cases again. This past winter, nursing homes banned visitors. “Hospitals have banned visitors,” he said. “You can see a situation where the institutions can allow people to visit if they can prove that they have been vaccinated.”
Information on administered Covid vaccines is fed into the same system used by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to detect children’s vaccinations, Gottlieb said. “The problem with the system is that it was never really designed to be accessible to consumers, so consumers currently have no way of getting the information to prove that they have been vaccinated.”
The paper cards of the CDC people currently receiving when they receive their Covid shots are unlikely to cut it either, he said. “It’s currently available on eBay … so people are not going to accept the cards as proof of vaccination.”
Therefore, digital documentation of Covid vaccine status should be available to Americans, he said. “How they choose to use it depends on them,” said Gottlieb, who was FDA chief in the Trump administration from 2017 to 2019.
Efforts to develop digital Covid vaccine records are underway, including a high-profile group backed by Microsoft and the Mayo Clinic, known as the Vaccine Initiative. The coalition said earlier this month it hopes to make the technology it develops available in May.
IBM is working with the state of New York on a digital pass that uses blockchain technology to verify a person’s test or vaccine evidence. Walmart, which does shots in its stores, recently supported calls for vaccination certificates.
The debate over so-called vaccine passports has become controversial, as some critics have raised concerns about civil liberties. In Florida, for example, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis this month signed an executive order preventing businesses from requiring anyone to present that they have received a Covid vaccine as a prerequisite for service.
Last week, the Biden administration ruled out vaccine passports at the federal level. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said on Tuesday: “There will be no federal vaccination database and no federal mandate will require everyone to get a single vaccination certificate.”
Gottlieb said, “in certain limited circumstances,” he expects people to demonstrate that they have been vaccinated against Covid. “So I think people should think differently about this,” he added. “At the moment, we as consumers do not own this information, and should do so.”
Disclosure: Scott Gottlieb is a contributor to CNBC and is a member of the boards of Pfizer, drafting genetic tests Tempus, the healthcare company Aetion Inc. and the biotechnology company. Illumina. He also serves as co-chair of Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings‘En Royal Caribbean‘s “Healthy Sail Panel.” The Associated Press contributed to this report.