Mariko Uda

The global response to the COVID-19 pandemic was characterized by a patchwork of government policies in countries around the world, many of which limited civil liberties in unprecedented ways. Here, our objective was to analyze the scope and spatio-temporal patterns of workplace vaccination mandates. Using daily policy data from the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker for 2021–2022, we developed a simple mandate intensity index representing the number of affected employment sectors and the duration of each mandate by country. These metrics suggest a largely inconsistent pandemic response. We found that less than one-third of the 185 countries included in the dataset implemented such “no jab, no job” policies. Even among groups of culturally and politically aligned countries, such as the core Anglosphere, policies varied greatly: between one (United Kingdom) and 10 (Australia) out of 12 employment sectors had vaccination mandates. The most frequently and longest mandated sectors included government officials and healthcare workers, two broad groups with different risk profiles. We discuss these discrepancies from a critical perspective, considering the limited evidence for the mandates’ effectiveness along with their potential to cause harmful outcomes, and recommend careful cost–benefit analyses in the future.

Immediately following the emergency use authorizations of COVID-19 vaccines, governments around the world made these products available to their populations and later started implementing differential rules for vaccinated and unvaccinated citizens regarding mobility and access to venues and services. The Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker (OxCGRT) is a time series database that reflects the extent of public health measures in each country. On the basis of the OxCGRT Containment and Health Index, we calculated a corresponding discrimination index by subtracting the daily index values for vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals. The resulting metric provides a cursory quantification of the discrimination experienced by unvaccinated individuals throughout 2021 and 2022. Patterns in the index data show a high degree of discrimination with great numeric and temporal differences between jurisdictions. Around 90% of countries in Europe and North and South America discriminated against their unvaccinated citizens at some point during the pandemic. The least amount of discrimination was found for countries in Central America and Africa. In order to move towards sustainable post-pandemic recovery and prevent discriminatory public health policies in the future, we recommend that human rights protections be expanded and the prohibition of discrimination be extended beyond a limited list of grounds.