Checking that guests have had the Covid19 vaccination

[Bryan10]

It looks like there will be a few workable vaccines within the next few months. Yay!  Have you thought about asking if future guests have had the vaccine, so you know that you and co-guests will be safe? Will you insist they've been jabbed before they come? Is there a way for them to prove they've been vaccinated (certificate etc)?  Is it necessary for all your guests to have had the vaccine, if you're not sharing a space?  Should there be a centralised Airbnb certificate for this (like getting verified)? Your thoughts & opinions please! 

[Helen350]

You're British @Christine2786 !!!! - We don't view 'privacy' the same way! 😉🤣

[Diana108]

I am 74 y.o. and have had my 2 vaccines. I would DEFINITELY require that guests show me their vaccine card before they enter my house. I have a duplex and live on one side so I don't have to interact with guests. Even so, I think "privacy" should not extend to deadly diseases. If Airbnb won't allow me to request vaccine cards, I won't re-open - I have been closed for a year.

[Michelle2475]

@Diana108  With all due respect- would you also require proof of other vaccines like measles, mumps, rubella, meningitis, etc. ? 

[Michelle2475]

@Diana108  Upon re-reading I’m a bit confused. If you’ve been vaccinated then what’s the problem?

[Lisa723]

@Bryan10 bucking the trend here, yes. Our house rules state that when a vaccine is widely available and recommended by US CDC, all guests must be vaccinated unless medically exempt, and that we reserve the right to require proof. Since July, anyone who has booked future dates with us has agreed to this rule.

[Anonymous]

@Lisa723 So you're currently offering Entire Home properties to large groups of up to 16 guests at a time, all without vaccinations, but in the entirely hypothetical event that vaccine availability meets your non-specific requirements, you assume the right to demand a medical procedure and personal documents from your guests - including those with bookings confirmed when the vaccine was an unknown - because they hypothetically "agreed" to it?

This sounds far more unprofessional than I'd ever expect from a seasoned hospitality provider such as yourself. If a hotel brand attempted this policy there would be lawsuits out the wazoo. What credible health organization's recommendations have you based your personal policy on? From the CDC website I only see guidance on vaccination mandates for schools, healthcare employers, and Green Card applicants, but no suggestion that private businesses can suddenly start imposing them on customers.

[Lisa723]

@Anonymous currently we are renting only to groups residing in a single household, in compliance with Washington State public health guildelines. This has not included any groups approaching size 16. In fact we have cancelled or rescheduled several bookings not in compliance with public health guidelines, mostly but not wholly with guests' willing cooperation. We also require all guests to comply with other Washington State public health guidelines, including mask-wearing etc.. We maintain 72 hours of vacancy from check-out to cleaning, and another 24 hours from cleaning to check-in. When a vaccine is widely available and the pandemic has receded we will relax these procedures.

And yes, I absolutely assume the right not to open my property to people who decline a widely available vaccine recommended by the US CDC, absent medical grounds. I am not aware that such people are a legally protected class, but if you know otherwise, I would appreciate a reference to your source.

[Lisa723]

@Anonymous in answer to your edit, it's an interesting question but I'm not aware that we must have explicit permission from the CDC for this requirement. My understanding is that we can discriminate on any grounds we like, as long as it's not against a specifically legally protected class (or, on Airbnb, against any group Airbnb disallows discrimination against). And I know that employers can require employees, at least, to be vaccinated. Similarly we do not allow firearms--though the US constitution guarantees the right to bear arms, that does not require us to permit the same on our own property.

On a practical level, of course this will be hard to strictly enforce, however our hope is that stating the rule will deter any anti-vaxers from attempting to book, and that overall the risk to our cleaners and other guests, as well as the risk of our property exacerbating a public health risk generally, will be mitigated.

[Anonymous]

@Lisa723  As a private individual choosing who you let into your personal residence, I'm sure you can have whatever requirements you please. But are you certain that your local laws allow you as a commercial operator on a public platform to compel your customers to show you their private medical data? To the best of my knowledge, business owners in most US states can require their employees to have vaccinations, but for private businesses unaffiliated with healthcare or childcare to make such requirements of their customers is such an extraordinarily unusual practice that I wouldn't even consider it without strong backing from an expert in your local laws (which I am not).

I realize that in most jurisdictions an Airbnb still remains in a legal gray area between personal home and public accommodation or housing, but on many fronts (such as the ADA) when the host is not sharing space with guests, Airbnb does tend defer to the policies and concepts reserved for public accommodations even when it's not strictly necessary (e.g. service animals). If businesses such as shops and restaurants were to start requiring that customers show vaccination records to employees that are not qualified to examine them, the immediate issue at hand is one of privacy rather than discrimination. Considering how many fanatical anti-vaxxers you have out there in the US, legal disputes are inevitable on both fronts. 

I don't really see the benefit in setting a policy in advance for circumstances that don't yet exist, whose consequences are unknown, and whose legal implications haven't shaken out yet. But one thing I am absolutely not going to do is start handling customers' medical documents.

[Lisa723]

@Anonymous well, of course I hope not to be sued, but I am not losing sleep over that prospect, given that I can't find any law or regulation (and despite my invitation, you haven't shared reference to any) that disallows this requirement. Re. the benefit of setting the policy in advance: our houses are booked up to one year ahead and the pandemic has only amplified that trend, with people rescheduling vacations and weddings, etc.. So since mid-summer we have been taking bookings that we can reasonably anticipate will occur after a vaccine is readily available here, and of course we do not want to surprise anyone with a new requirement after they have booked-- more to the point, we want to attract guests who are on board with vaccination and deter those who are not. (For our in-home guest suite, we are doing as I believe you are; it is simply closed with no available dates for the time being.)

Be assured I was not advocating for you or anyone else to adopt our policy-- I was only answering the OP's question.

[Anonymous]

@Lisa723  I'm sorry that I don't quite feel like doing a late night deep dive into researching your state's laws, as of course it's your responsibility and not mine to be aware of them. 

Given how much of this situation is without precedent, it's unsurprising that it's hard to find a reference to clarify the extent to which you're empowered to make medical demands of your customers. It will be interesting to see how that changes when the vaccine situation moves out of the hypothetical column and more cases move into the courts over who can and can't demand vaccinations of others. But as enthusiastic I'd be about receiving an effective vaccine, being forced to disclose medical data to unqualified personnel as a condition of access to ordinary services is a development I'd fervently oppose.

[Lisa723]

@Anonymous I agree it will be interesting. I appreciate the feedback-- I usually agree with your remarks and I take your opinion seriously.

[Helen350]

@Anonymous @Lisa723 I don't see vaccination status as private medical data... To me it bears no comparison with having/not having a disease or medical condition. And I don't see it a a particularly personal/private issue, certainly  not a condition that would cause stigma or embarrassment. JUST a vaccine.... No big deal.

And as we can choose who we let into our homes, we can ask questions to ensure a good 'fit'. 

Airbnb is ordering hosts and guests to wear masks to protect each other. Conscientious objection does not appear an option. - I view mandating vaccines as no different from mandating masks!

[Lisa723]

@Helen350 come on, vaccination is certainly a more personal and invasive requirement than mask-wearing; they are different. There's no reasonable argument that a mask is permanent or could have unknown side effects; and whether someone is wearing a mask is physically evident, while vaccination is not. But both are measures that individuals take for their own benefit and for community benefit, and both have the characteristic that the most selfish option is to forgo it and leave it to everyone else to make the community safe. And I agree with you that a certificate verifying that a person either has been vaccinated or is medically exempt is not tantamount to private medical data.

[Anonymous]

@Helen350 @Lisa723  I'm really not sure to what extent I disagree with either of you, as I'm very much in favor of taking every means available - including masks - to shorten the crisis period that is affecting all of our lives here. But I feel like an important detail of medical privacy that I really care about might have slipped through the cracks here.

Sure, you can say that people who can prove that they're medically exempt from a vaccination requirement (whatever that means - this is not politically settled) don't have to meet your requirements, but you could be causing genuine harm if you hubristically ask them to give you a reason. If there is a legitimate medical condition that renders the available vaccine especially risky for them, it may very well be something that they have every right to not disclose to a total stranger such as ourselves, who is not qualified to handle medical records. Let's say it turns out that the widely available vaccine interacts especially badly with a certain HIV treatment, and your guest is coming from a country where homosexuality is subject to death penalty and they are therefore obtaining their medications through a complicated foreign resource. Would it be fair for you as a total stranger, contacted through a platform that is known to sell customer data freely to oppressive regimes, to demand that such a guest show you evidence of their exemption, knowing that this very conversation might expose them to potentially fatal persecution?

I know this all might sound hypothetical to some of the heterosexuals reading this, but I personally know several people who live under these exact circumstances - the pills they import to save their lives can at any moment become a death sentence if the wrong sentence about them is intercepted on the internet. So @Helen350 , to answer your question, no matter how much you might feel entitled to information about someone's very private medical information, once the internet gets involved it can actually be a matter of life and death to a lot of people whose fates you hadn't thought of.