The Covid-19 vaccine passports: a failure of policy

Abstract In many countries, the roll-out of the Covid-19 vaccines was accompanied by vaccine passports. In Sweden, anyone aged 18 or above was required to have taken two doses of an approved vaccine to visit any venues with a capacity of a hundred guests or more. This article compares Swedish 17- and 18-year-olds in difference-in-difference and event-study analyses. These indicate that the vaccine passports produced an effect that lasted around four or five weeks and led to at most approximately one per cent of unvaccinated 18-year-olds getting vaccinated. The vaccines were not sterilizing but plausibly lowered the reproductive value and thereby slowed the spread of the virus. However, with at most a negligible effect on take-up, there is little to recommend the vaccine passports.