Lithuanian Prime Minister Ingrida Simonyte says it’s too soon to speak about the introduction of the “green pass”, being considered at the EU level, in Lithuania until a significant part of the country’s population is not vaccinated against the coronavirus.
In her words, the main condition for such a document proving immunity from COVID-19 is for vaccination “to have progressed fast enough” so that it’s “a certain incentive for a person for their decision to get vaccinated”. “I have no doubt that we now have a lot of people who would decide to get vaccinated and would get vaccinated if we had enough vaccines to immunize them. The state cannot do that yet and we should not offer those major privileges as well,” the prime minister told a press conference on Tuesday. She also said a major breakthrough regarding vaccines should be expected in the second quarter. “We could expect it in the second quarter when we should receive bigger shipments of Pfizer vaccines,” she said.
Simonas Krepsta, a presidential adviser, said on Tuesday some 600,000 COVID-19 vaccines should be delivered to Lithuania but the end of March, and another 3 million vaccines are expected in the second quarter. According to Simonyte, the European Council discussed the “green pass” issue last week “only at the principle level”, adding that no details on its technical implementation have been agreed yet. She believes such an immunity document could be used for cross-border travel but is cautious about its use inside the country. Following last week’s remote EU summit on the issue, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said “vaccine certificates” could be introduced over the course of three months, adding that this system should meet data protection standards. Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda backs the “green pass” idea and says that Lithuania would seek for it to cover no only vaccinated people but also those who have had the infection.
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