Coronavirus mutations have made 2021 dawn as chaotically and dismally for
business travel as 2020 ended. But at least there is light at the end of the
tunnel now that vaccination is under way.
Unfortunately, how long that tunnel remains for corporate travellers, and
the speed at which they can emerge from it, may prove greater and slower respectively
than many would hope. Unfettered travel will depend not only on when travellers
themselves get vaccinated but when the rest of the world is willing to welcome
them again.
The first challenge for corporate travel is that generally governments are
prioritising a combination of older citizens, health and other key workers, and
the most medically vulnerable. “Most business travellers won’t qualify for the
vaccine until late 2021. They are at the end of the queue,” says Emanuele
Scansani, director of partnerships and strategic relations for travel risk
consultancy Riskline.
There has been some speculation that individuals could jump the queue
through private vaccination. “We’ve been asked this by a number of our
clients,” says Dr Adrian Hyzler, chief medical officer for risk management and
medical assistance company Healix. But Dr Hyzler thinks this is unlikely to be
allowed.
“There is such a clamour for vaccines that any company which starts
selling them privately is going to become a pariah,” he says. “They will have
to carry on selling to governments only. Private vaccination will only be
possible when there is excess supply.”
Hyzler believes any notions of getting to that stage by April or May this
year are “pie in the sky. Good levels of community immunity by next winter are
the aim for wealthy countries.”
Even that target may prove difficult if there is failure to control a
second and very different type of pandemic, that of anti-vaccine
misinformation. “I see this being a big problem in 2021,” says Scansani.
For countries which have fared poorly in the scramble for vaccine doses, often
through lack of buying power, the wait could be even longer than winter 2021.
Businesses with travellers based in (or travelling to) smaller and poorer
nations will therefore want to pay particular attention to the progress of
Gavi, the alliance aimed at ensuring equitable vaccine distribution.
However, whether individual travellers have received the jab is only part
of the story. Cyprus has been an outlier in indicating it will waive
Covid-related entry rules from March for visitors who have been vaccinated.
Dr Hyzler thinks most countries will be considerably more cautious while
questions remain about how successfully vaccination will halt the Covid-19
pandemic. Although three vaccines have already been approved in Western
countries, “there are two vital pieces of the puzzle we don’t have,” according
to Dr Hyzler.
The first uncertainty is how long the approved vaccines will provide
protection. The second is that the extent of their protection remains unclear.
“We know 19 out of 20 people [who are given the BioNTech/Pfizer or Moderna
vaccines] are not going to get symptoms or severe disease,” says Hyzler.
“What we don’t know is whether they will get asymptomatic disease. It
protects a person coming into the country but not necessarily the people in the
country. Governments will want to know how many people are vaccinated in their
own country and in the country the traveller is coming from.”
As countries reach these thresholds, Hyzler believes, they will start to
open air corridors between each other. But with vaccinated travellers not
guaranteed to be clear of infection, testing and in many cases quarantining as
well (though perhaps for fewer days than at present) even for those who have
received the jab is likely to continue until the situation is much improved.
Scansani takes a different view from Hyzler. He believes governments will
be driven to a less cautious approach by financial hardship. Scansani expects
global unemployment to worsen in 2021, leading to “a need for economic
liberalisation and getting people moving again”.
Initiatives to introduce
digital health passports, registering whether travellers have been vaccinated
and/or tested, could prove vital to faster travel resumption. But records of
this kind raise a whole new set of challenges relating to data protection,
according to one European Union-based travel manager requesting anonymity.
“I have concerns about corporations mandating that, to go on a
business trip, travellers must upload medical documents which are shared with
various governments, airlines and other travel suppliers,” he says. “Imagine what would happen if malign forces could hack
into the system and retrieve millions of [pieces of] medical data in combination with
bookings. It’s very dangerous to have all this information in one place.”
The same travel manager believes that in any case
companies remain some way off being able to order reluctant employees back on
the road. Employers have to be mindful not only of the employee’s own health
risk profile but of family members’ as well.
A more difficult question arises if
employees refuse to be vaccinated when one becomes available to them. Hyzler
thinks employers would be put in a very awkward position. “They will
find it difficult to tell their people they must get vaccinated,” he says.
“There would be huge publicity. You would have lawyers queuing up to say
employers weren’t letting them do their job.”
For employees who are willing to travel and to be vaccinated, both Hyzler
and Scansani say there is no reason to forbid them from travelling before receiving
their jabs, if local laws permit.
Each potential trip, according to Hyzler, needs to be assessed on the
basis of the infection rate in the destination country, the quality of its
healthcare service and the health risk profile of the individual traveller.
“Companies could say they won’t allow business
travel until the employee is vaccinated but they will be waiting a long time,”
says Hyzler. Scansani agrees. “It’s not necessary to wait for a vaccination,”
he says. “If travel is a necessity and the employee is willing, they should be
encouraged to go. You are much less likely to be infected on an aircraft than
you were having Christmas dinner with your family.”