Vaccine passports may start in early 2022

Unvaccinated South Africans could face restrictions on being able to access public services and places of employment as soon as the beginning of 2022 after the discovery of a new variant and SA’s exclusion from international travel brought further urgency to debates about mandatory vaccination.

Talks between the government, business and labour on the introduction of a form of Covid-19 vaccine passport system are at an advanced stage.

A passport system would restrict access to certain events and would not involve people being forced to take jabs against their will. The word “mandate” implies compulsion, but in the SA context, it is roughly equivalent to a passport system.

Business Day was told by a person involved in the process that negotiations had been happening at the National Economic Development & Labour Council (Nedlac) for months. The parties expect to agree on a proposal that could be released within weeks for public comment.

Insiders involved in the talks at Nedlac said President Cyril Ramaphosa’s statement on Sunday, in which he announced that a team had been set up to look into the introduction of vaccine mandates for specific activities and locations, was a result of this process. The president has previously stressed the difficulty of imposing mandates and worries that such a step may violate people’s constitutional rights.

Business and labour sources also said that legal opinion had been sought in anticipation of a possible constitutional challenge to vaccine mandates. Companies such as Discovery have pressed on with mandates for their employees, having sought legal advice that left them confident they would successfully repel challenges.

The new sense of urgency comes as SA’s vaccination programme falters, with just 35% of the population inoculated.

Even before the announcement by local scientists last week of the discovery of the new variant, since named Omicron, concerns had been expressed that the unvaccinated posed a risk to the country’s economy and public health. They are multiple times more likely to spread the virus and

allow it to mutate. A failure to give jabs to enough people — with the government far away from its 70% target for the end of 2021 — exposes SA to an unending cycle of Covid-19 waves and lockdowns.

SA isn’t the only country to lose patience with those who reject vaccines, with Greece this week announcing mandatory jabs for people older than 60 and fines for those who fail to do so.

Moves towards vaccine mandates have received a boost from an apparent change of heart from Cosatu, the country’s biggest labour federation and a key ally that helped Ramaphosa win the ANC presidency in 2017. Its individual leaders have said they prefer vaccinations to be voluntary. But in its response to

Ramaphosa’s speech, Cosatu said the effect of the pandemic on jobs and health means that “we now need collectively as society to engage on requiring vaccinations to enter public spaces, malls, restaurants, events, sports”.

It said individual choice cannot be at the expense of the right to life. It also pointed out that legislation places an obligation on employers to ensure the safety of customers and workers. That puts Cosatu’s stance more in line with that of business.

Business for SA’s Martin Kingston said on Tuesday the organisation was encouraged by the formation of a task team to “work through the finer details” of vaccine mandates.