The symposium on “Vaccine Passport and Macao’s Economic Recovery”, one of the series of activities held by the Ministry of Education Key Research Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences at Universities - City University of Macau Research Centre for Macau Social and Economic Development for celebrating the 40th anniversary of the University, was held on the Taipa campus of the City University of Macao today (14th). Prof Ip Kuai Peng, Pro-Rector of the University and Director of the Research Centre, hoped that the SAR government would launch green customs clearance measures, such as “vaccine passport”, and lay a solid foundation for cross-border movement of personnel, covering activities such as tourism, studying abroad and business travels, to accelerate the recovery of local economy and promote integration of our economy into the national economic cycle.
Led by Prof Ip Kuai Peng, the research team, which included: Executive Associate Dean Xi Li and Programme Coordinators James H.W. Shen, Wendy Goa and Xin Wang from the Faculty of International Tourism and Management, Programme Coordinator Huang Xiaoyan from the Faculty of Business, Course Coordinator Lin Deqin from the Faculty of Finance, Director Sheng Jian and Researchers Chen Peiyi and Xiao Mingyu from the Research Management Office, attended the symposium.
Ip Kuai Peng pointed out that since the outbreak of Covid-19 pandemic at the beginning of last year, the SAR government had adopted a series of measures that helped ensure the overall social and economic stability of Macao. However, as an open micro-economy, the recovery of local economy still depended on epidemic developments in other places. As epidemic prevention and control had become normal routines and the government was launching the third round of economic relief measures, we were at a critical time for speeding up economic recovery. If mutual vaccine recognition between Guangdong and Macao could be implemented, it would become a significant impetus for Macao’s economic recovery.
He continued to said that in order to implement the vaccine passport to facilitate customs clearance for vaccinated travelers commuting between Macao and the Mainland and for international travelers entering the Mainland via Macao, it was first and foremost that greater efforts be made to promote the Covid-19 vaccination plan and that vaccinations be carried out as quickly as possible to ensure that the local population was widely vaccinated and a certain vaccination rate was reached to form an immunity barrier. At the same time, Macao had had no new local cases of Covid-19 for more than a year. It was important to make good use of various channels to widely distribute the information, vigorously promoting the image of Macau as a healthy and safe city to attract visitors to Macao to give the small and medium-sized enterprises of the catering, souvenir and retail industries driving forces. In addition, the SAR government must continue to monitor the pandemic situation, strengthen local health care and public health systems, take the lead in improving the cooperation mechanism for joint epidemic prevention and control within the Greater Bay Area and with other Mainland cities so as to detect the threat of potential new mutated viruses as soon as possible and be prepared for the possible rebound of the epidemic.
Xi Li believed that the introduction of vaccine passport would help overcome the barriers of international travels to a certain extent but its feasibility and effectiveness still needed to be assessed. With respect to the feasibility, the main concern was that currently vaccination was not mandatory and universal. If vaccine passport was required for traveling, it may lead to controversy over fairness. In terms of effectiveness, the ability to travel was only one of the preconditions for the development of tourism. For the tourism development in the post-epidemic era, issues to be considered also included whether the financial situations of potential tourists had recovered, and whether factors such as the experiences and attractions provided by the tourist destinations have been adjusted and improved in response to market demands in the post-epidemic era.
According to James H.W. Shen, Macao had effectively controlled the epidemic at an early stage and in the days that followed, the introduction of vaccine passport for travel restrictions to be relaxed and for tourists’ confidence in Macao as a tourist destination to be strengthened would become the focus of attracting tourists. He suggested that big data be used to predict passenger flows and heat maps be used to count the real time number of tourists so as to triage tourists. That would help build the image of Macao as a safe tourist city. In addition, because of differences in the places of issuance, effective period, and credibility of vaccine passports, the influx of foreign tourists may have a certain impact on local residents. Macao authorities should try its best to review vaccine passport and sooth residents’ emotions to both attract tourists and make locals happy.
Wendy Gao said that although the Macao government had launched a number of activities to stimulate the economy and Macao’s tourism industry had rebounded slightly, the effect was not satisfactory. The main factors that discouraged mainland tourists to come to Macao were travel risks and extra efforts required, such as the need to present nucleic acid test results issued within seven days. Therefore, reducing the non-monetary costs for people to travel was one of the main strategies to attract Mainland tourists to Macao. With more and more people getting vaccinated, if governments could negotiate and reach an agreement on vaccine passport, that is, an electronic health card couldd be issued to those who vaccinated and they would not be required to undertake a nucleic acid test, the obstacles to travel would be reduced. However, the vaccine passport should only be a health certificate for traveling and should not become a means to force everyone to get vaccinated.
Xin Wang pointed out that internationally there was still controversy over the feasibility of vaccine passport and the vaccination rate in Macao was still not satisfactory. In view of that, Macao should speed up vaccination of locals first and then negotiate with Mainland neighbors on a mechanism for mutual vaccine recognition based on the concept of “travel bubble”, gradually creating the conditions required for opening up to tourism and be prepared to align with international trends. In addition, as there were tourists who were not suitable for vaccination but needed to travel to Macao, a comprehensive approach to health passport should be looked into. That meant on the one hand, the requirement for nucleic acid test results could be exempted for tourists vaccinated and on the other hand, unvaccinated tourists should be allowed to show valid negative nucleic acid test reports to accelerate the recovery of the tourism economy by facilitating customs clearance under the provision that safety was ensured.
Huang Xiaoyan stated that the cross-border mutual recognition of vaccine passports mainly relied technically on electronic health certificates downloaded through mobile apps and would contain information such as related medical history, travel history and vaccination records. In terms of policy, cross-border mutual recognition required agreements between governments and should start with neighboring areas, gradually expanding to others. Finally, attention should be paid to some possible issues, including: how to prevent frauds, what the criteria for obtaining a certificate should be, how long the validity period of the certificate should be and whether the certificate should tell which vaccine was given (it was recommended that the efficacy rate of vaccines required for other regions except Greater China should be 90% and above).
Lin Deqin emphasized that the implementation of the vaccine passport would facilitate tourists to visit Macao, promoting the development of non-gaming industries such as the retail industry and the hotel industry. Secondly, blockchain technology, which was already used for the mutual recognition of Macao Health Code and Yuekang Code, could be leveraged to address people's concern about personal privacy protection related to the implementation of the vaccine passport. Such experience would prepare Macao for its future development of FinTech and financial industry. Finally, the convention and exhibition industry would also benefit from the implementation of vaccine passport and its recovery would be conducive to the moderate economic diversification in Macao under the premise that the health and safety of local residents and exhibitors was ensured.
Sheng Jian concluded the symposium by pointing out that in addition to boosting the morale of local people from all walks of life, the vaccine passport was also very important for showcasing the SAR’s governance capabilities. Macao had demonstrated excellent performance in epidemic prevention, supported the international community in fighting the epidemic as a member of the China’s foreign medical aid teams and also actively discussed with others on vaccine passport. All those were useful for presenting Macao’s image as a safe tourist destination to the rest of the world and would help promote strategies such as the development of the Guangdong-Macao Intensive Cooperation Zone in Hengqin in the long run.
The City University of Macau has always been rooted in Macao and has been serving the country. It has formed an interdisciplinary and cross-departmental research team based on major strategies of the country and the development needs of Macao, enhancing industry-university-research cooperation at a steady pace and conducting research on issues pertinent to the governance of the SAR and the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area initiative in order to better serve local society and make greater contributions to the sustainable development of the country, Macao and the region.
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