Dr. Anthony Fauci said Monday that the US government will not require Americans to use vaccine passports to prove they’ve been immunized against the coronavirus.
The director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases said the federal government “may be involved in making sure things are done fairly and equitably.”
“But I doubt if the federal government is gonna be the leading element of that,” Fauci told the “Politico Dispatch” podcast.
Fauci said he expects certain businesses and educational institutions to be the ones to create their own policies about vaccination.
“I’m not saying that they should or that they would, but I’m saying you could foresee how an independent entity might say, ‘Well, we can’t be dealing with you unless we know you’re vaccinated.’ But it’s not going to be mandated from the federal government,” he said.
Andy Slavitt, a senior adviser to the White House COVID-19 response team, also previously said the Biden administration is only providing guidance to the private sector on how to develop the so-called passports.
“The government is not viewing its role as the place to create a passport nor a place to hold the data of citizens. We view this as something that the private sector is doing, and we’ll do what’s important to us,” he said at a press briefing.
“And we’re leading an interagency process right now to go through these details and that some important criteria be met with these credentials. No. 1 that there is equitable access. That means whether or not people have access to technology or whether they don’t,” he added.