Digital vaccine passports are novel technologies, built on uncertain and evolving science. By creating infrastructure for segregation and risk scoring at an individual level, and enabling third-parties to access health information, they bring profound risks to individual rights and concepts of equity in society.

BMJ analysis of 48,000 records also finds one in eight patients die within four months of discharge

There is a growing body of evidence, however, that pulse oximetry is less accurate in darker skinned patients. Given the increased mortality amongst ethnic minority patients during the Covid-19 pandemic, it is possible that the differential accuracy of pulse oximetry is a contributing factor to this health inequality

We were often taught to look for symptoms, such as rashes, in a way that I knew wouldn’t appear on my own skin.'

In the U.K., a recent poll suggested that while Britons were strongly supportive of vaccine passports in principle, agreement broke down when asked whether they should be compulsory for pub visits. For marginalised groups, this feels like nudge theory to overcome a reluctance (based on real trauma) to trust public health services: “some employees who don’t want to get the vaccine feel harassed and ostracized.”

High levels of deprivation and job insecurity, vast income inequality, housing discrimination and medical disparities have long had a severe impact on the tangle of communities and ethnic minority populations that live in these boroughs. But when combined with the necessity to go to work, to take public transport and to share space in densely packed housing, they also provided the perfect breeding ground for a deadly virus. The domino effect would prove catastrophic.

For people of low socio-economic status (SES), a number of factors increase their exposure to COVID-19. Possible causal mechanisms include an increased exposure to the virus, the stress and comorbidities associated with poverty and reduced access to health care. UK policymakers rapidly identified people with multiple comorbidities as particularly vulnerable. However, they must expand their definition of vulnerability to include social factors as risks for COVID-19.

Actor David Harewood's BBC documentary explores why people of colour are more likely to die from Covid-19.