"I have been saying for a long time that corona passports are out of date," Lutsar said on Raadio 2 this morning. 

"During the Delta strain, they really showed whether a person is potentially infected or not, but now we don't see it anymore. Vaccinated people suffer as often as non-vaccinated people, the only difference being that vaccinated people suffer much more easily."

Asked if Estonia should stop using the certificates, she said: "In principle, yes, they could be abolished domestically." However, they will still need to be used for international travel.

The professor did not agree that Omicron is a milder strain of the virus.

"It's not right. For an unvaccinated person, Omicron is just as difficult, maybe a little lighter than the Delta strain, but Omicron can also cause serious illness," she said.

Lutsar said it is not known what kind of strains will come in the future and she did not want to make predictions. She said it does not benefit the virus to create "worse" strains because it can only reproduce within people. If it kills too many, it also means the end of the virus.

Society must also decide what living with the virus means. She said some people will inevitably get very ill and die, but we must ask if this means society needs to be completely shut down.

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