UPDATE FROM THE SOUTH EAST CONFERENCE REGARDING COVID-19

Friday, 26 March 2021 Dear Friends and Colleagues,

We want to bring to your attention an immediate response to the government’s call for evidence on the COVID-Status Certification Review.

Please see below the communication from the government website: https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/covid-status-certification-reviewcall-for-evidence/covid-status-certification-review-call-for-evidence

“The government is reviewing whether COVID-status certification could play a role in reopening our economy, reducing restrictions on social contact and improving safety.

COVID-status certification refers to the use of testing or vaccination data to confirm in different settings that individuals have a lower risk of getting sick with or transmitting COVID-19 to others. Such certification would be available both to vaccinated people and to unvaccinated people who have been tested.

The government will assess to what extent certification would be effective in reducing risk, and its potential uses in enabling access to settings or relaxing COVID-secure mitigations.

The government is looking to consider the ethical, equalities, privacy, legal and operational aspects of a potential certification scheme, and what limits, if any, should be placed on organisations using certification.

We are issuing this call for evidence to inform this review into COVID-status certification, to ensure that the recommendations reflect a broad range of interests and concerns. We welcome views from all respondents.

How to respond

The call for evidence is open for 2 weeks from Monday 15 March to Monday 29 March. Please submit your response by email to: certification.cfe@cabinetoffice.gov.uk

You can respond either with text in an email or with attachments to an email. There is no requirement for each response to cover every question: please respond to the questions which are most relevant to you and your expertise. Responses do not need to be exhaustive - we welcome short responses that provide relevant comments.”

As a conference we are neither advocating pro-vaccination or anti-vaccination, we are simply inviting you to exercise your civil liberties in responding to the government consultation. Kind regards,