What Do Vaccines REALLY Mean for Travel?

During the heady days of 2020 when the pandemic was a new arrival and lockdowns a short-term novelty, popular wisdom among travel industry folks held that the arrival of vaccines would spell both the end of the pandemic and the reopening of good, old-fashioned travel. But, sadly, it doesn’t seem to be playing out that way.

First, the good news. More workable vaccines have been developed more quickly than pretty much anyone thought possible. This is a huge achievement and a great sign for the future.

Now, the less good news. We have no idea how long the immunity from these will last — or, in the case of the UK, what the consequences of altering the tried-and-tested vaccination schedule will be. We also don’t know whether all, some or any of these vaccines stop people being able to transmit the disease.

Most importantly, not all vaccines seem set to work well against all existing mutations, let alone future mutations, which will be under considerable evolutionary pressure to become resistant. (Novavax, for example, was almost 90% effective in the UK, where the British strain dominates, but barely 50% effective in South Africa, where the South African strain dominates.)

This is…. Not ideal.

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The WHO recently asked Britain to pause its vaccination programme after covering the most vulnerable, and share its vaccine wealth with poorer countries. Beyond the ethical case (unlikely to speak to a Boris Johnson government), there’s a clearer point of self-interest here: if you let the virus spread more or less unchecked in poorer countries, more and more mutations are likely to develop and those that are vaccine-proof will prosper.

Bitter experience suggests, however, that rich countries won’t be donating vaccines to poor countries until they’ve vaccinated everyone, possibly even including pets. So we’ll likely see a bunch of more-or-less vaccine-proof mutations arriving, which will mean vaccines need to be reformulated.

Mutations, needless to say, will be an absolute gift to antivaxxers, Qanoners, Plandemicers and Covid-deniers of all shapes and forms. That — and I’m looking at you, America — may well impact some rich nations’ ability to achieve herd immunity.

Regardless, rich countries that are controlling their pandemic will increasingly tighten their borders against poorer countries that aren’t. And, let’s face it, every single country that has controlled its pandemic has severely limited international travel.

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Right now, it’s clear that nations which are progressing with vaccination — like those few that have the virus under control — are not opening their borders, but closing them. Wealthy European countries are restricting entry to protect their populations from new strains. And, while a handful of EU nations, signally Iceland, are opening their doors to other EU citizens with EU-approved jabs and yet-to-be-determined certificates, you can bet your bottom dollar that rich nations are not going to make it easy for residents to travel to countries that don’t have the virus under control and come home bearing new and exotic strains. (I also suspect that travel corridors with other rich nations rather than, say, Vietnam will be the priority.)

I don’t think we’ll see restrictions as harsh as Australia’s, with citizens having to apply for permission from central government to get on a plane and nationals stuck outside the country awaiting space on very limited flights. But strict vaccination, testing and quarantine requirements, plus the sorts of travel advisories that invalidate most insurance, will make journeys like the one I used to make so regularly (between the UK and Indonesia) complicated, fraught and hella expensive.

At the moment, international travel is very, very difficult, with flight cancellations, border closures, route closures, changes of visa rules, changes of testing or quarantine regulations, and even blanket bans on nationals who’ve spent time in infected countries being implemented at whiplash speed. Long-haul travel is particularly fraught: I’ve heard of people stuck for weeks in what was supposed to be a transit stop after the rules for their destination changed after they’d departed.

And between “rusty” pilots and struggling airlines skimping on maintenance, flying is going to be considerably less safe than it was. With an increasing number of airline bankruptcies plus route closures and reduced passenger numbers, it’s also going to be very much more expensive.

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There has been a lot of talk about vaccine passports — an extension of the old yellow card which holds your yellow fever and other vaccination records. But, besides the not-insignificant issue of getting 200-ish governments to agree on a globally recognised format and build the digital framework in a sane timeframe, there are a range of other challenges.

Firstly, it’s already clear that not all vaccines are created equal: some simply don’t work as well as others, and others will work better against certain strains. Should Indonesia’s choice of vaccine, China’s Coronavac, which proved just over 50% effective in trials in Brazil (though over 90% effective in trials in Turkey), be treated as equivalent to a vaccine with 95% efficacy? What if said vaccine with 95% efficacy proves only 30% effective against a new strain?

Secondly: how do you protect against fraud? Indonesia has a thriving market in fake Covid tests and I’m absolutely certain vaccine passports will be available at a price in many, many countries.

And, thirdly, if a new strain that’s not been tested against existing vaccines emerges in a country or spreads to another and other nations shut down flights and close their borders, what difference will a vaccine passport make?

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I am neither Einstein, an epidemiologist nor a public health expert, so I’m not sure what the best route forward is here. Letting the virus rip through the population won’t just kill and sicken many and drive new mutations, it will overload health services — and the idea that society and the economy can continue to function normally when soldiers are stationed outside hospitals to turn away the sick and dying is just plain delusional. Hoping that the virus will mutate to a less virulent form runs the risk of it becoming more virulent.

If world governments could agree to shut their borders (with limited, tested exclusions for trade and compassionate reasons) and pursue elimination strategies, and rich nations could help poor nations manage the cost, the virus could be wiped out. But the chances of that sort of cooperation seem about as high as the chances of global climate change coordination.

Many less wealthy nations are unlikely to finish vaccinating their populations until 2024, by which point one can assume their early vaccinations will be largely moot, either because the virus is less virulent or because mutations will have out-evolved the original vaccines. So, I think the days of gaily hopping on a plane to Bali, popping across to Vietnam, travelling overland around Cambodia, Laos and Thailand then hopping over to campervan around Oz, are gone for the foreseeable. Vaccines and (supervised) quarantines will remain part of life until the virus is either eliminated or becomes less virulent.

I’d like to say I have a brighter vision for inter-European travel. But I’m not at all sure that, after a reasonably relaxed 2020 summer culminated in a brutal winter wave, many EU countries are going to open their doors to fellow Europeans without quarantine this summer (this interview with a German virologist explains why).

For 2021 — and, quite likely, 2022 as well — I think it’s time to embrace the joys of slow, limited and local (perhaps extremely local!) travel. I will, of course, be delighted to be proved wrong.

Image by MasterTux from Pixabay.