Sweden's vaccine passport mandate barely moved the needle on shots
A new analysis of Sweden's Covid-19 vaccine passport policy found it convinced at most 1% of holdout young adults to get vaccinated—despite restricting access to public venues. The finding suggests such mandates may impose significant social and economic costs for minimal public health gain, raising questions about their effectiveness as a policy tool.
Originaltitel: 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.