EU to consider COVID-19 certificates featuring vaccination, testing data

Call them what you will, but the European Union may be calling them certificates as the region tries to chart its path forward out of the pandemic.

Next week, the EU's executive will propose that new COVID-19 certificates combine information on vaccination, recovery from the sickness and test results to avoid discrimination between citizens, a senior official said.

Southern EU countries reliant on tourism hope that such documents could help unlock theirsummer season this year, but they ran into opposition from Germany, France and Belgium stressing that inoculation is neither obligatory nor available to all.

'Not a passport'

"We are working on a certificate it's not a passport but it's not only about vaccination. [It's] about recovery for the people who had sickness, vaccination or test," European Justice Commissioner Didier Reynders said on Thursday.

"We don't have mandatory vaccine so it's possible to refuse to be vaccinated. And we don't have for the moment the capacity to organize vaccination for all the people who want to be vaccinated. We don't want to have any discrimination."

WATCH | Canada's health minister on vaccines, vaccine certificates:

Canada looking into how to share unused vaccine doses with lagging countries

4 years ago

Duration 10:53

Federal Health Minister Patty Hajdu said in an interview on Rosemary Barton Live that Canada is looking into the process for redirecting its extra doses of COVID-19 vaccines to countries that need them.

The certificate concept is under considerationin Canada with Health Minister Patty Hadjurecently telling CBC News that it remains a"very live" issue for Ottawaand its counterparts around the world.

Vaccination push continues

The EU's slow rollout of COVID-19 vaccines has been widely criticized, with only about fiveper centof people inoculated so far.The bloc's target of inoculating 70 per centof its adult population by the end of the summer is seen to be increasingly in question.

But, keen to revive economic growth mauled by the pandemic, the bloc's 27 national leaders agreed last month to prepare joint rules for such COVID-19 "green certificates" before the summer.

However, they still have not agreed on how exactly to use them and what travel rights would be attached.