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(CNN) – Now that coronavirus vaccines are starting to roll out in the United States and abroad, many people can dream of the day when they can travel, shop and go to the movies again. But to do these activities, you may need something in addition to the vaccine: an application for a vaccination passport.
Several companies and tech groups have started developing smartphone apps or systems that allow individuals to download details of their Covid-19 tests and vaccinations, creating digital credentials that could be displayed in order to enter theaters. concert, stadiums, cinemas, offices or even countries. .
The Common Trust Network, an initiative of the Geneva-based nonprofit The Commons Project and the World Economic Forum, has partnered with several airlines including Cathay Pacific, JetBlue, Lufthansa, Swiss Airlines, United Airlines and Virgin Atlantic, as well as hundreds of healthcare systems. across the United States and the government of Aruba.
The CommonPass app created by the group allows users to upload medical data such as a Covid-19 test result or, optionally, proof of vaccination by a hospital or healthcare professional, by generating a health certificate or passing in the form of a QR code that can be shown to authorities without revealing sensitive information. For travel, the app lists health pass requirements at departure and arrival points based on your itinerary.
“You can be tested every time you cross a border. You can’t get vaccinated every time you cross a border, ”Thomas Crampton, director of marketing and communications for The Commons Project, told CNN Business. He stressed the need for a simple and easily transferable set of credentials, or a “digital yellow card”, referring to the paper document usually issued as proof of vaccination.
Big tech companies are also getting into the act. IBM has developed its own app, called Digital Health Pass, which allows businesses and sites to customize the metrics they would need to enter, including coronavirus tests, temperature checks, and vaccination records. The credentials corresponding to these indicators are then stored in a mobile wallet.
In an effort to tackle a challenge of getting back to normal after widespread vaccine distribution, developers may now be faced with other challenges, ranging from issues of confidentiality to portraying the varied efficacy of different vaccines. But perhaps the most pressing challenge is simply to avoid the rambling implementation and mixed success of the technology’s previous attempt to solve the public health crisis: contact tracing apps.
At the start of the pandemic, Apple and Google put aside their rivalry with smartphones to jointly develop a Bluetooth-based system to notify users if they had been exposed to someone with Covid-19. Many countries and state governments around the world have also developed and used their own apps.
“I think where exposure notification faced some challenges was more piecemeal implementation choices, lack of federal leadership… where each state had to go it alone and each state had to. so solve it independently, ”said Jenny Wanger, who heads exposure notification initiatives for the Linux Foundation Public Health, a technology-driven organization that helps public health authorities around the world fight Covid-19.
To encourage better coordination this time around, the Linux Foundation has partnered with the Covid-19 Credentials Initiative, a collective of over 300 people representing dozens of organizations on five continents and also working with IBM and CommonPass to help develop a set of universal standards. for vaccine identification applications.
“If we’re successful, you should be able to say, I have a vaccine certificate on my phone that I got when I was vaccinated in a country, with a whole set of its own vaccine management practices. health … that I used to fly to a completely different country and then presented in that new country a vaccination certificate so that I could go to that concert that was going on inside for which participation was limited to those who demonstrated they had the vaccine, ”said Brian Behlendorf, executive director of Linux Foundation.
“It should be interoperable the same way email is interoperable, the same way the web is interoperable,” he said. “Right now we’re in a situation where there are moving parts that bring us closer to that, but I think there’s a sincere commitment from everyone in the industry.
Part of ensuring that vaccine passports are widely used is the large subset of the world’s population who still do not use or still do not have access to them. A few companies within the Covid-19 Credentials Initiative are also developing a smart card that provides common ground between traditional paper vaccine certificates and an online version that is easier to store and replicate.
“For us, it is [about] how these digital credentials can be stored, can be presented, not only through smartphones, but also in other ways for people who do not have access to a stable internet and who do not own smartphones ”, said Lucy Yang, co-head of the Covid-19 Accreditation Initiative. “We are looking at this, and there are companies that are doing really promising work.
Once they have built a vaccine passport, companies will need to make sure people are comfortable with its use. This means dealing with concerns about the handling of private medical information.
CommonPass, IBM and the Linux Foundation have all emphasized that privacy is at the heart of their initiatives. IBM says it allows users to control and consent to the use of their health data and allows them to choose the level of detail they want to provide to authorities.
“Trust and transparency remain paramount when developing a platform like a digital health passport, or any solution that handles sensitive personal information,” the company said in a blog post. “Prioritizing privacy is an important priority for managing and analyzing data in response to these complex times.”
Since vaccines manufactured by multiple companies in multiple countries are at different stages of development, passport manufacturers will need to consider many variables.
“An entry point – whether it’s a border or a place – will want to know, have you received the Pfizer vaccine, have you received the Russian vaccine, have you received the Chinese vaccine, so they can take a decision accordingly, ”Crampton said. The gap can be significant: The vaccine developed by Chinese state-owned pharmaceutical giant Sinopharm, for example, has an 86% effectiveness against Covid-19, while vaccines made by Pfizer and Moderna each have an effectiveness of around 95%. .
It is also unclear how effective vaccines are in stopping transmission of the virus, says Dr. Julie Parsonnet, an infectious disease specialist at Stanford University. So even though a vaccine passport application will show that you have received the vaccine, it may not be a guarantee that you are safely attending an event or getting on a flight.
“We still don’t know whether people who are vaccinated can transmit the infection or not,” she told CNN Business. “Until this is clarified, we will not know whether ‘passports’ will be effective.”
Nonetheless, Behlendorf predicts that the rollout and adoption of vaccine passports will happen fairly quickly once everything is in place and expects a variety of applications that can work with each other to be “widely available.” »During the first half of 2021.
“Rest assured, the nerds are on this,” he said.
The-CNN-Wire ™ and © 2020 Cable News Network, Inc., a Time Warner Company. All rights reserved.
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