The vaccination and testing status of an individual does have a bearing on the risk they are exposed to and the risk they present to others. So both can be useful tools for your risk assessment.
- Someone who is double jabbed is less likely to get seriously ill from Covid and is less likely to spread Covid to others.
- Someone who has recently tested negative with a lateral flow test is less likely to be infectious.
But you have to be careful how you use this information to inform your plan:
- Vaccination and testing are measures to go alongside others, not to replace them. So a room full of vaccinated people should still have mitigations in place, for now.
- Collecting data opens you up to data protection issues.
- Excluding people based on status opens you up to discrimination and reputational risks.
What are the options for finding out people’s status?
- NHS COVID Pass/vaccination certification (differs in the four nations)
The NHS COVID Pass is a way an individual in England can demonstrate that they are fully vaccinated, have had a recent negative test, or have natural immunity. Certification in the other nations is currently not as easy to obtain or comprehensive (e.g. just vaccination status).
Find out more about Covid certification in:
The Event and Attractions guidance (England) says organisations can consider asking individuals to show their NHS COVID Pass. The NHS COVID Pass guidance says:
"Use of the NHS COVID Pass is voluntary for individual organisations. However, we encourage the use of the NHS COVID Pass in facilities or events where people are likely to be in close proximity to a large number of people from other households for a sustained period of time. This is likely to include settings that have the following characteristics:
- crowded indoor settings such as nightclubs and music venues
- large unstructured outdoor events such as business events and festivals
- very large structured events such as business events, music and spectator sport events"
So, you don’t have to use it and a rehearsal would be unlikely to meet the event criteria listed above. But groups do have the option of asking members to show an NHS COVID Pass/vaccine certification. The key things to consider are:
- People don’t have to have the vaccine, or the answer.
- If they have not been vaccinated/won’t answer, what will you do?
- If you exclude on this basis, you would be in danger of discriminating against protected characteristics, e.g. age (not everyone can have the vaccine).
- Exclusion could be a difficult situation to manage that creates division in your group and has a reputational impact. Using vaccination status as a condition might actually create more problems than than it solves.
- Vaccination status is not a replacement for other measures. The measures you should have in place anyway will protect members, vaccinated or not.
- There is no issue here with collecting or storing medical data if you are only looking at their pass/status document, not keeping that information.
- Ask members about their vaccination and/or test status (e.g. a survey).
- This has the same issues as above regarding requiring people to do it and excluding people on the basis of their answer or lack of answer
- If you ask for people’s names it creates a data protection issue, as you would be asking for and storing sensitive personal (medical) data
- Ask anonymously
We believe that encouraging members to take up vaccines and do regular lateral flow testing, and finding out (anonymously) whether they have had vaccinations and/or are doing regular lateral flow testing is the best way forward.
- This approach assumes you are not excluding people, so removes the issues and risk associated with exclusion, and avoids antagonising your members
- It also removes the issue of storing sensitive data as it would be anonymous
- But it would give you useful data to reflect back to the whole group – e.g. 85% of members are double vaccinated/90% are doing regular tests twice a week - so that should make those who haven’t had the vaccine (for whatever reason) or who are vaccinated but still nervous feel comfortable in attending rehearsals.
- You may wish to repeat the questions (always anonymously) after 3 or 4 months, as the percentage is likely to have changed with continued rollout and/or if lateral flow tests become less easily accessible for people.
