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Vaccine passports – the future?, illustration photo, source: internet

At the end of December, thousands of Europeans received the first doses of the Pfizer-BioNtech COVID-19 vaccine after the company received authorisation in the EU. Since then, other countries such as the US, Israel, the UAE, Bahrain, India, and several Asian countries, including Vietnam, have also started to receive or order vaccines to prepare for mass vaccination programmes.

This has awakened optimism about an end to the pandemic and the idea of a vaccine passport.

A heated discussion

Some parts of the world, such as the Seychelles, Cyprus, and Romania, have begun to remove quarantine requirements for visitors who have been vaccinated. In early January, Denmark also announced that it would issue vaccine passports to citizens within the next three to four months.

To get digital vaccine passports, Danish citizens will have to declare their medical and vaccination status on a government-issued app. Owners of such passports will be able to return to Denmark without quarantine and receive access to bars, restaurants, and hotels.

Iceland became the first European nation to issue vaccine certificates in late January. While Greece also announced it will unveil a digital vaccination certificate for those who have received two doses of the vaccine, Israel recently announced that a so-called Green Badge will allow vaccinated people to go to restaurants, attend public events, and travel freely. Other countries that are currently issuing or waiting for vaccine passports include the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, and Sweden.

Despite being supported by several countries and seen as a necessary condition for freedom of movement, vaccine passports have received mixed reactions in many places. The UK, the first in the world to vaccinate people against COVID-19, had previously denied plans for vaccine passports to allow people to travel abroad, but they can ask for proof of vaccination in case they need to travel.

One of the reasons not to issue a vaccine passport is that COVID-19 vaccination is not compulsory in the UK, said MP Nadhim Zahawi. The EU is also divided over vaccine passports. Some, such as France, Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands, as well as organisations like the World Health Organization and the European Commission, also argued that vaccine passports do not ensure safe travel.

In France, Health Minister Olivier Véran has repeatedly said it is too early to discuss vaccination passports since fewer than 2.5 million French people have received the first dose and because it is unclear whether the vaccine prevents transmission.

Meanwhile, Germany also advised not to loosen many of the restrictions. To date, the 27 EU member states have only agreed on mutual recognition of COVID-19 test results. The introduction of vaccine passports remains a story of the future, especially as more new coronavirus variants are discovered. The European Commission says it will not be rushed into a decision on passports while only 3 per cent of Europeans have been vaccinated.

The US also expressed caution with vaccine passports as President Biden asked government agencies to evaluate the feasibility of linking coronavirus vaccine certificates with other vaccination documents and producing digital versions of them.

Possible resurrection?

Although controversies abound, governments and technology firms around the world are leaning towards using vaccine passports to recover the economy and revive the tourism and entertainment industries.

Some companies and tech groups like IBM have also started to develop smartphone applications where users can upload detailed information about their tests and vaccinations to create a digital health certificate or use QR codes to display their vaccination status to the authorities without disclosing sensitive information.

Zurab Pololikashvili, secretary general of the UN’s World Tourism Organization, has called on the world to apply vaccine passports on a larger scale as an indispensable element for the tourism industry’s recovery.

“One key element vital for the restart of tourism is consistency and harmonisation of rules and protocols regarding international travel,” he said in an email. “Evidence of vaccination, for example, through the coordinated introduction of what may be called ‘health passports’ can offer this. They can also eliminate the need for quarantine on arrival, a policy which is also standing in the way of the return of international tourism.”

The International Air Transport Association (IATA) supports vaccine passports and also piloted their digital application called IATA Travel Pass piloted on Singapore Airlines flights late last year. IATA said it could expand the programme to other destinations if the pilot is successful.

Singapore Airlines also plans to incorporate health certifications into a mobile app in mid-2021. Passengers who have tested for COVID-19 at clinics designated by the airline will be issued an electronic certificate with a QR code or a paper health certificate.

Some airlines, like Qantas, said they would make vaccine documentation mandatory on all flights while Gulf Air, Emirates, and Etihad will test a travel pass designed by the IATA.

In Vietnam, the first batch of vaccines was imported a few days ago as the first happy signal for reopening. Once the country is truly safe from the pandemic, ministries and departments will study to issue a passport similar to the vaccine passports.

However, tourism expert Truong Nam Thang, a member of tourism research projects of the Tourism Advisory Board and the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism, said that by December, the nation will temporarily achieve herd immunity in key economic and tourism cities. By June 2022, Vietnam hopes to reach herd immunity across the country.

Thus, it will not be until the end of the second quarter of 2022 that Vietnam can normalise international trade as well as gradually restore tourism and international travel.

HoSE considers suspending amendment and cancellation orders while trading

The proportion of amendment and cancellation orders has tended to increase. If these orders are stopped, the liquidity on HoSE will be eased by 30 per cent. This solution can be implemented immediately without any technical intervention, said HoSE.

HoSE said that this solution had certain impacts on investors’ behaviour as they will consider carefully before placing buy and sell orders. Algorithmic trading orders will be harder to execute due to the higher risk. At the same time, split spread orders will also be reduced.

However, according to the general manager of a securities company, the suspension of cancellation and amendment orders can be applied theoretically, but in terms of service and experience, it will not be really applicable.

“Even at banks, when customers write incorrect payment orders, they can still leave and re-correct,” he said.

An individual investor said that in case this solution is applied, if the order is placed wrongly, trading may become troublesome because it cannot be modified.

“We have to watch the electronic board all day if we want to trade because it is impossible to predict market movements during the session,” he said.

HoSE said it would listen to all feedback from investors regarding this new solution.

According to HoSE, in January 2020, the total number of amendment and cancellation orders on the bourse reached nearly 770,000 out of a total of more than 2.7 million orders, equivalent to an average of more than 45,000 cancel orders among over 160,900 orders per day.

Thus, the number of amendment and cancellation orders accounted for more than 28 per cent of the total trading orders. The number of trading days per month fluctuates from 15 to 23 depending on national holidays.

In June 2020, there were nearly 2.6 million amendment and cancellation orders out of a total 8.4 million transaction orders, accounting for 31 per cent.

In December 2020, the number of amendment and cancellation orders soared to nearly 4.4 million out of a total 13.9 million transaction orders, accounting for 31.76 per cent.

In February this year, although there were only 15 trading sessions, there were still more than 3 million amendment and cancellation orders, out of a total of nearly 9.1 million transaction orders, accounting for 33.05 per cent.

System overloads took place before and after the Tet (Lunar New Year) holiday when liquidity suddenly increased to about VND14-17 trillion (US$600-$730 million) per session, affecting many investors’ trading.

The sudden increase in liquidity recently is unpredictable, causing undesired interruptions in trading, said Le Hai Tra, Chairman of the Board of Members of HoSE.

To tackle this issue, the State Securities Commission said it was speeding up the implementation of a new information technology system for the entire stock market, known as KRX.

However, due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the implementation of the new system was delayed and if the disease progresses, it will be difficult to continue the plan.

In another move to ease system overload, the State Securities Commission has instructed the transfer of transactions of listed shares from the Ho Chi Minh City Stock Exchange to the Ha Noi Stock Exchange.

However, so far, no companies listed on HoSE have volunteered to switch trading to the HNX.

Vietnam Maritime Commercial Joint Stock Bank choses Amazon Web Services, Inc as its cloud provider for TNEX, the first digital-only bank in Viet Nam. — VNS Photo

Vietnam Maritime Commercial Joint Stock Bank has chosen Amazon Web Services, Inc, a subsidiary of the internet giant, as its cloud provider for TNEX, the first digital-only bank in Viet Nam.

TNEX was developed by MSB in 10 months as a radically new mobile platform that brings all digital banking and lifestyle services under one umbrella through a super app.

It is designed with customer experience and data science at the centre of its products, services and features, and focused on addressing unmet customer needs by offering free, innovative and simple everyday banking products to the approximately 60 million Vietnamese who have no or limited access to banking and financial services.

TNEX offers its customers advanced digital banking services, supports their lifestyle needs such as food, education, travel, entertainment, health, fashion, and messaging and chat, and provides access to a digital eco-system populated by its merchant partners.

Consumers can directly buy products and services from the merchant marketplace with the TNEX app and pay digitally using QR codes.

By tapping the scalability of AWS cloud, MSB can monitor and ensure compliance.

Leveraging AWS’s broad and deep portfolio of cloud services including analytics, machine learning, and containers enables TNEX to develop better ways to serve customers by innovating and deploying new products faster and drive operational efficiencies.

Bryan Carroll, chief executive officer of the digital bank, said: “TNEX provides our customers with an entirely new banking experience that supports their daily spending and lifestyle needs. Through the development of our platform on AWS, we gained the speed and agility needed to build a full-service merchant marketplace in six months and an SME and consumer digital bank in only 10 months.

“By using AWS, we accelerated the delivery of the innovative financial services that our customers have been asking for and the tools and services that our merchants require to grow their business.”

A key segment for TNEX is Generation Z, the demographic that succeeded millennials. By 2025 Vietnam’s Generation Z of digital-first consumers with significant spending power is expected to comprise 25 per cent of the country’s labour force. — VNS

The hilly city of Da Lat is home to many pagodas, some of which are very well-known among tourists.