Maintaining the Covid Safe Ticket (CST) in view of a possible new wave of the covid-19 pandemic is not self-evident, according to privacy experts heard in the House Health Committee on Tuesday.
These experts expressed themselves within the framework of the open debate in the Chamber on the obligation to vaccinate. If this idea does not win many votes, some actors in the fight against the pandemic have considered that the CST could be put on hold and not deleted in order to be able to reactivate it if Belgium faces a new wave of contamination.
The switch to code yellow announced last Friday has put an end to the use of this health pass. “It’s disabled but it’s not gone“, pointed out Matthias Dobbelaere-Welvaert, head of the Ministry of Privacy foundation, which advocates for the removal of this tool. “He created more damage in society than allowed to find a solution“, he asserted.
Criticized for its lack of effectiveness
In particular, the objective of the CST is called into question. First designed as a health pass, it was criticized for its lack of effectiveness before being considered as an incentive tool for vaccination. For Professor Elise Degrave (UNamur), this is a problem to be solved. According to him, the public authorities have resorted to the CST like advertisers to the “nudging“, that is to say the nudge by which we encourage people to adopt a behavior without sanctioning them. However, this involves a risk: that of “govern without legislating“. “You have to be honest with the citizen“, she added. “Currently, there is a lot of hypocrisy towards him“.