The concept of ‘immunity passports’ comes with practical difficulties and a lack of sufficient scientific backing

With May 17 just ten days away, 1.3 billion people are waiting with bated breath to see if the Government is able to usher in a graded relaxation of the 53-day-long lockdown that India is currently under. The Government, on its part, is mulling how to gradually open up the nation and the economy without resulting in a fresh outbreak of Coronavirus cases.

As of now, the number of cases in the country is inching towards the 50,000 mark as States registered 2,958 fresh Coronavirus cases in the last 24 hours. There have been 1,694 casualties till now as the toll zoomed to 126 in one day across the country. 

Amid this spike, the Centre’s dilemma is made worse by the assessments made by British brokerage firm Barclays, which pegged losses to the Indian economy at $120 billion or four per cent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), putting more pressure on the Government to ease the lockdown, at least on commerce, at the earliest.

If the recent surge in cases is anything to go by, India still has a long way to go before it can claim to have a grip on COVID-19, unlike New Zealand which has successfully eliminated the virus. According  to Ashley Bloomfield, Director-General of Health, New Zealand, this feat was achieved through rapid preventive measures, widespread testing and scientific research-based methodologies.

India needs to script its own success story in controlling the virus on one hand and revivifying the economy on the other hand. This naturally needs an immediate restoration of business and commercial activities but this is fraught with unimaginable risks to public health. As it is, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Gujarat have continued to report a high number of COVID-19 cases while Delhi’s Coronavirus count reached 5,000 after a deadly spike on May 4. But despite the doom and gloom scenario, the economy has to be opened up anyhow. These exasperating conditions have led some countries to explore the option of giving “immunity passports” or “risk-free certificates” to those who were infected with COVID-19 but recovered from it.

These passports or certificates issued by the Government are being visualised as a way to help people go to work and, in the process, get the economy moving again. In order to have an immunity passport, one would have to be reliably tested for antibodies and specific proteins that could help stall and stop the growth of the Covid-19 infection. This concept quickly caught the imagination of many nations stuck in various levels of the lockdown as it presented a plausible exit strategy from the existing limbo. But the concept of immunity passports has its own share of practical difficulties and lack of sufficient scientific backing, all of which make it a major hit or miss initiative.

The foremost challenge for the immunity passport strategy is that the antibody testing procedures across the world are in their formative stages. Even the home-testing kits for the same are not up to the mark in terms of quality and require strict following of instructions as per the kit.

Then there is also the issue of people who have fought off the disease initially having got infected again, whereupon their immunity failed. This also undermines the concept of immunity passports, as once the person is granted an immunity certificate, there is no guaranteeing that s/he will not get infected again, thereby posing a threat of community transmission.

The issuance of an immunity passport will also cause sociological issues as it demarcates “healthy” people from “sick” people who have no option but to wait for vaccines or drugs to be developed.

The novel Coronavirus is a “new” strain and has no precedent’ nobody knows how and when it ends and the level of immunity needed to tackle it. Therefore, it is very difficult to predict how and when an infected person can be pronounced safe. Basing immunity-related conclusions on still-developing antibody testing processes for a disease that has evolved out of a new strain is nothing but speculation, which is not advisable. The lockdown of the global economy has dealt a major blow to incomes. However, panic-led initiatives to open the economy can lead to a major loss of lives, which are more precious than monetary gains.

India must follow the trio of best practices adopted by New Zealand, wherein rapid isolation measures for hotspots, widest possible population testing using the latest scientific methodology is combined with a calibrated easing of activities for green and orange zones. It must also ensure that the identified hotspots or red zones stay fully quarantined. India must also encourage the scientific research community to identify measures to enhance and bolster cell-level immunity in human bodies as that alone provides the first line of defence against the COVID-19 virus.                  

(The writer is an environmental journalist)