Four in 10 churchgoers only want to go to a service if everyone is required to show a corona pass in order to get in, according to new research.

Around one in five do not have a strong opinion, but almost half of Roman Catholic worshippers believe in a pass policy, a survey of around 1,000 frequent churchgoers has found.

The poll, conducted by DirectResearch, was commissioned by Christian paper the Nederlands Dagblad and religious radio programme Dit is de Dag.

Half of people surveyed thought that unvaccinated churchgoers were putting others at risk, and vaccination levels in this community roughly match the general population – except in several, small orthodox Protestant denominations where the levels are ‘significantly lower’, reports NPO Radio 1.

From Saturday September 25, the government is dropping its obligatory 1.5m distance ruling, but asking bars, restaurants, and indoor locations to require a valid coronavirus entry pass to admit anyone over 12. The pass shows that someone has been fully vaccinated, has valid proof of recovery or a negative result from a coronavirus test in the previous 24 hours.

A government spokesman told DutchNews.nl that although the pass system initially only worked with ‘a limited number of browsers’ to connect with the official DigiD identity system, it can now ‘support most of them.’

However, non-EU visitors cannot use the pass unless their vaccination certificates are compatible with the European Digital Coronavirus Certificate (DCC), which is not the case for people from the UK or the US.

More than 32 million QR-codes have successfully been issued, a health department spokesman told DutchNews.nl. ‘In the future, the NHS app may be connected to the DCC,’ he added. ‘Talks about this are ongoing at a European level.’