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* Health experts see obstacles to rapid herd immunity
* Travel body chief says compulsory shots 'discriminatory'
* Number of cases worldwide has passed 90 million
(Adds British PM and EU-Moderna talks)
By Laurence Frost and Jane Wardell
PARIS/SYDNEY, Jan 11 (Reuters) - The head of a global travel
organisation on Monday opposed making COVID-19 vaccinations a
requirement for travellers in the fight against the pandemic,
despite scepticism about reaching herd immunity this year.
Several health experts said during the Reuters Next
conference that the mass roll-out of coronavirus vaccines would
not result in enough people having immunity to be able to
effectively stop COVID-19 from spreading.
Some policymakers have proposed immunisation should be
compulsory for air travel as the world steps up the battle to
curb the spread of COVID-19, and Australia's Qantas Airways has
said it plans to introduce such a requirement.
But Gloria Guevara, chief executive of the World Travel and
Tourism Council, said such moves would be similar to workplace
discrimination.
"We should never require the vaccination to get a job or to
travel," Guevara, whose organisation represents a sector that
has been badly hit by the pandemic and accounts for as much as
10% of global employment, told a panel at Reuters Next.
"If you require the vaccination before travel, that takes us
to discrimination."
She was supported by AirAsia Group CEO Tony
Fernandes, who said global testing protocols remained key to
unlocking travel.
Their comments contrasted with a majority of online panel
viewers in a snap poll who supported a vaccine requirement.
The contrasting views highlighted the difficulties reaching
agreement on ways to defeat COVID-19 as the death toll from the
virus and its economic fallout mount.
More than 90 million people are reported to have been
infected by the novel coronavirus globally and about 1.9 million
have died from the disease since it first emerged in China in
December 2019, according to a Reuters tally.
MASS VACCINATION
A growing number of countries are rolling out COVID-19
vaccines such as those developed by Pfizer and its
partner BioNTech, by Moderna and by
drugmaker AstraZeneca alongside Oxford University.
Many countries are in lockdown and many are preparing to
start vaccination campaigns. A number of those that have already
begun their roll-outs are trying to buy more vaccines as
concerns mount over new COVID-19 variants.
Underlining those concerns, Prime Minister Boris Johnson
said Britain was in "a race against time" to roll out vaccines,
and the European Union is in talks with Moderna to order more
vaccines, according to EU officials and an internal document.
Dale Fisher, chairman of the World Health Organization's
(WHO) Outbreak Alert and Response Network, voiced caution about
the chances of countries quickly reaching herd immunity.
"We won't get back to normal quickly," he told Reuters Next.
"We know we need to get to herd immunity and we need that in a
majority of countries, so we are not going to see that in 2021,"
Fisher told Reuters Next.
Pandu Riono, an epidemiologist at the University of
Indonesia, told the conference some governments were
over-reliant on the coming vaccines and this meant herd immunity
could not be achieved in the near term.
Irma Hidayana, the Indonesia-based co-founder of
LaporCOVID-19, an independent coronavirus data initiative, said
public trust in vaccines could have an impact on the roll-out.
Another problem, Fisher said, was uncertainty about the
ability of the virus to mutate further and, with wealthier
nations at the front of the queue to get vaccines, the WHO has
said there is a "clear problem" that low- and middle-income
countries are not yet receiving supplies.
For more coverage from the Reuters Next conference please
click here or www.reuters.com/business/reuters-next
To watch Reuters Next live, visit https://www.reutersevents.com/events/next/register.php
(Writing by Jane Wardell, Laurence Frost and Timothy Heritage,
Editing by Alexander Smith)
