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. 2021 Dec 18;9(12):1498.
doi: 10.3390/vaccines9121498.

COVID-19 Passport as a Factor Determining the Success of National Vaccination Campaigns: Does It Work? The Case of Lithuania vs. Poland

Marcin Piotr Walkowiak  1 , Justyna B Walkowiak  2 , Dariusz Walkowiak  3
Affiliations

COVID-19 Passport as a Factor Determining the Success of National Vaccination Campaigns: Does It Work? The Case of Lithuania vs. Poland

Marcin Piotr Walkowiak et al. Vaccines (Basel). .

Abstract

As the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic poses a global threat, it is of utmost importance that governments should find effective means of combating vaccine hesitancy and encouraging their citizens to vaccinate. In our article, we compare the vaccination outcomes in the past months in two neighbouring post-communist EU states, Lithuania and Poland. Both introduced COVID-19 certificates, but only the former followed with gradual limitations for those who failed to get vaccinated, beginning with restricted access to restaurants, sports facilities and indoor events, and finally banning residents without a certificate from entering supermarkets or larger shops and using most services. By contrast, in Poland, the certificate remained a tool for international travel only. We show using statistical data that Lithuania's strict policy, regardless of its social implications, led to markedly higher vaccination outcomes in all age groups than those in Poland at the time.

Keywords: COVID-19; interventions to increase vaccination coverage; public health; trust in vaccines; vaccination; vaccination coverage.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Vaccination rate of the European Economic Area—percentage of adults who received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine as of 30 September 2021, data for Germany presented in pre-unification borders, with Berlin excluded, based on Koch Institute [28]; source of data on other EEA states: ECDC [29].
Figure 2
Figure 2
Share of the adult population that has received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine until a particular day, source of data: covidvax.live [30].
Figure 3
Figure 3
Vaccination rate increase between 30 June 2021 and 31 October 2021, as a percentage of the remaining population that got vaccinated. Source: Ministry of Health of the Republic of Lithuania.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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