Published in El Pais, 1 September 2021.
Around the world borders are being opened up and locally activities from before the pandemic are beginning to be offered again, that is if you are fully vaccinated. The idea of vaccine passports have been talked about since long before the availability and it makes sense, those who are vaccinated are less likely to contact and spread the virus so they should be able to do things that non vaccinated cannot. So what does it mean to be fully vaccinated? Unfortunately the answer to that question has become complicated.
If we were to look at the CDC’s definition for example, those who have received two doses of Moderna or Pfizer or one dose of Jansen are fully vaccinated. This means that those who have received other vaccines that have been approved for the WHO in other countries such as the Sputnik vaccine prevalent in South America would not fit this definition. It gets even more complicated north of the Border where the Canadian government has approved mixing vaccines. Those who have done so are fully vaccinated in Canada but not the US.
This difference in my opinion has caused many “fully vaccinated” individuals to find unexpected obstacles in the US. Cruise ships, who hire a large amount of foreign workers, will not hire those individuals who do not fit the CDC definition nor accept passengers with a similar predicament.
These problems will happen all over the world until countries agree to recognize the WHO’s definition of fully vaccinated so that people who did the right thing face discrimination. We keep talking about a return to normal, that will never happen unless everyone is treated fairly.
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