Why You'll Likely Need A 'Vaccine Passport' To Travel In The Near Future

Hannah Uebele is a producer for Under the Radar with Callie Crossley and previously worked as associate producer for Boston Public Radio. She graduated from Tufts University with a B.S. in English and Environmental Studies. She's a proud Delawarean but has found herself saying "wicked" more and more often, so the Bostonian metamorphosis is well underway.Contact: hannah_uebele@wgbh.org

February 16, 2021

Updated August 07, 2023

Traveling may soon require passengers to show a "vaccine passport" — documentation proving they have been vaccinated against COVID-19. Travel expert Rick Steves spoke with Boston Public Radio on Tuesday about the possibility of vaccination passports becoming the norm.

"We've got to be able to cross borders and prove that we are vaccinated," he said. "Whether it'll be a chip on our passport or an old-fashioned piece of paper, I don't know. But the family of nations has to figure it out."

Steves said that the idea of a COVID-19 vaccine passport isn't much different from other requirements that existed in the past.

"When I was a kid, I always traveled with the Yellow Card [or International Certificate of Vaccination]," he said. "You had to have your shots. If you didn't, at the border they wouldn't let you in. We've been able for a couple of decades to travel to developed countries without that pass. But in the future, one way or the other, we'll have that again."

Rick Steves is an author, television and radio host and the owner of the Rick Steves' Europe tour group. You can catch his television show, "Rick Steves’ Europe," weeknights at 7:30 p.m. on GBH 2 and his radio show, “Travel With Rick Steves,” Sundays at 4 p.m. on GBH.