Public Views about COVID-19 “Immunity Passports”

Abstract

Importance

Discovery of effective vaccines and increased confidence that infection confers extended protection against COVID-19 have renewed discussion of using immunity certificates or “passports” to selectively reduce ongoing public health restrictions.

Objective

To determine public views regarding government and private conferral of immunity privileges.

Design and Setting

National on-line survey fielded in June 2020. Participants were randomly asked about either government “passports” or private “certificates” for COVID-19 immunity.

Participants

Adults from a standing panel maintained for academic research, selected to approximate national demographics.

Main Outcomes/Measures

Level of support/opposition to immunity privileges, and whether views vary based on: government vs. private adoption; demographics; political affiliation or views; or various COVID19-related attitudes and experiences.

Results

Of 1315 respondents, 45.2% supported immunity privileges, with slightly more favoring private certificates than government passports (48.1% vs 42.6%, p=0.04). Support was greater for using passports or certificates to enable returns to high-risk jobs or attendance at large recreational events than for returning to work generally. Levels of support did not vary significantly according to age groups, socioeconomic or employment status, urbanicity, political affiliation or views, or whether the respondent had chronic disease(s). However, estimates from adjusted analyses showed less support among women (Odds Ratio, 0.64; 95% Confidence Interval, 0.51 to 0.80), and among Hispanics (0.56; 0.40 to 0.78) and other minorities (0.58; 0.40 to 0.85) compared with whites, but not among blacks (0.83; 0.60 to 1.15). Support was much higher among those who personally wanted a passport or certificate (75.6% vs 24.4%) and much lower among those who believed this would harm the social fabric of their community (22.9% vs 77.1%).

Conclusions and Relevance

Public views are divided on either government or private use of immunity certificates, but, prior to any efforts to politicize the issues, these views do not vary along usual political lines, nor by characteristics that indicate individual vulnerability to infection. Social consensus on the desirability of an immunity privileges programs may be difficult to achieve.

Key Points

Question

What are the public’s views on government or private use of immunity “passports” to selectively lift COVID-19 restrictions?

Findings

Views are divided and do not vary substantially according to political affiliation or many demographic factors. Support is greater among men but lower among Hispanics and those who believe that immunity privileges would harm the social fabric of society.

Meaning

Social consensus will be difficult to achieve on the appropriateness of immunity privileges.

Article activity feed

SciScore for 10.1101/2021.01.26.21250184: (What is this?)

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

Table 1: Rigor

Institutional Review Board Statement	not detected.
Randomization	The survey randomly split respondents into two arms -- one that described government adoption of an immunity “passport” and the other private adoption of an immunity “certificate.” Each arm explained the immunity privilege concept as follows: “if an antibody test shows that you have had the disease, you could receive an ‘[immunity passport/certificate]’ which would let you engage in more activities.
Blinding	not detected.
Power Analysis	not detected.
Sex as a biological variable	not 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: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

Results from Barzooka: We found bar graphs of continuous data. We recommend replacing bar graphs with more informative graphics, as many different datasets can lead to the same bar graph. The actual data may suggest different conclusions from the summary statistics. For more information, please see Weissgerber et al (2015).

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.

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