Assessing the impact of COVID-19 passes and mandates on disease transmission, vaccination intention, and uptake: a scoping review

PURPOSE: Policymakers have struggled to maintain SARS-CoV-2 transmission at levels that are manageable to contain the COVID-19 disease burden while enabling a maximum of societal and economic activities. One of the tools that have been used to facilitate this is the so-called “COVID-19 pass”. We aimed to document current evidence on the effectiveness of COVID-19 passes, distinguishing their indirect effects by improving vaccination intention and uptake from their direct effects on COVID-19 transmission measured by the incidence of cases, hospitalizations, and deaths. METHODS: We performed a scoping review on the scientific literature of the proposed topic covering the period January 2021 to September 2022, in accordance with the PRISMA-ScR guidelines for scoping reviews. RESULTS: Out of a yield of 4,693 publications, 45 studies from multiple countries were retained for full-text review. The results suggest that implementing COVID-19 passes tends to reduce the incidence of cases, hospitalizations, and deaths due to COVID-19. The use of COVID-19 passes was also shown to improve overall vaccination uptake and intention, but not in people who hold strong anti-COVID-19 vaccine beliefs. CONCLUSION: The evidence from the literature we reviewed tends to indicate positive direct and indirect effects from the use of COVID-19 passes. A major limitation to establishing this firmly is the entanglement of individual effects of multiple measures being implemented simultaneously. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12889-023-17203-4.