Are we ready for COVID-19’s Golden Passport? Insights from a Global Physician Survey

  1. P. Murali Doraiswamy
  2. Mohan Chilukuri
  3. Alexandra R. Linares
  4. Katrina A. Bramstedt

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Abstract

Introduction

COVID-19 immunity passports could protect the right to free movement, but critics worry about insufficient evidence, privacy, fraud, and discrimination. We aimed to characterize the global physician community’s opinion regarding immunity passports.

Methods

Cross sectional, random stratified sample of physicians registered with Sermo, a global networking platform open to verified and licensed physicians. The survey aimed to sample 1,000 physicians divided among the USA, EU and rest of the world. The survey question on immunology asked physicians to offer their insights into whether we know enough about COVID-19 immunity and its duration to offer immunity passports at the present time.

Results

The survey was completed by 1004 physicians (67 specialties, 40 countries, 49% frontline specialties) with a mean (SD) age of 49.14 (12) years. Overall, 52% answered NO, 17% were UNCERTAIN, and 31% answered YES ( P <0.05). EU physicians were more likely to sayYES but even among them it did not exceed 35% approval. US physicians (60%) were more likely to say NO.

Conclusion

Our findings suggest a current lack of support among physicians for immunity passports. It is hoped that ongoing research and vaccine trials will provide further clarity.

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  1. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.11.25.20234195: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board StatementConsent: Ethical aspects: This anonymous survey was conducted following an online informed consent process.
    IRB: This analysis does not include any sensitive or identifiable data and was deemed exempt research by Duke University Medical Center’s institutional review board.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    Study strengths and limitations: To our knowledge, this is the first global survey to investigate the opinions of physicians about immunity passports. The survey benefited from a relatively large sample drawn from diverse specialties and practice settings across 40 countries. The use of Sermo, a global platform of verified and licensed physicians, allowed us to recruit verified frontline and nonfrontline practicing doctors. There are also some limitations with our survey. These include the relative absence of respondents from developing regions (e.g. Africa), sampling bias (e.g. people registered on a platform), response biases (e.g. degree to which they are interested in topic may have influenced their participation) and confounding effects of variables not measured. Also a cross-sectional survey cannot determine causality or predictive validity – indeed the risks and benefits of immunity passports may not be fully known for decades. Thus, while our findings must be viewed as preliminary, they may provide valuable insights for policy makers. Overall, a healthy global economy requires a healthy population (those cured of COVID-19 and those prevented from acquiring it). This population will need to move across regions for both leisure and commerce. Even though physicians are not yet ready for immunity passports, the International Air Transport Association is moving forward with the idea [4] and plans pilot testing of their Travel Pass in late 2020. It is hoped that the ongoing...

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    About SciScore

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers), and for rigor criteria such as sex and investigator blinding. For details on the theoretical underpinning of rigor criteria and the tools shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.

  2. Version published to 10.1101/2020.11.25.20234195 on medRxiv