Denmark hopes for a Covid-19 vaccination passport

(CNN) – Like many countries around the world, Denmark is desperate to reopen the parts of its economy frozen by the pandemic.

The kingdom of less than six million people has become one of the most effective distributors of vaccinations in Europe and aims to stab its entire population by June.

Acting Minister of Finance of Denmark Morten Bødskov last week predicted that a so-called coronavirus passport would be introduced by the end of the month.

“Denmark is still being hit hard by the corona pandemic,” he said. “But there are parts of Danish society that need to move, and a business community that needs to be able to travel.”

The government has since indicated that a deadline for February may be ambitious, but the relatively small Scandinavian country may still become the first world to formally adopt the technology to open its borders in this controversial way.

“This is fundamental”

As exports suffer and important business activities are captured, Foreign Minister Jeppe Kofod said it was important to keep Denmark ahead, even if the country was locked up until 28 February.

As one of the world’s most digitized countries, Denmark is ideally placed to become a testing ground for this new technology, which uses public and private cooperation, says Kofod.

“This is fundamental, because if we want to start exporting again and trade again, business people want to meet again, things like the corona passport are fundamental to making that happen,” he says.

Time is running out

Lars Ramme Nielsen of the Chamber of Commerce in Denmark is also campaigning for the rapid adoption of the technology, and says time is of the essence.

“If we do nothing, if we sit and wait, nothing will happen,” he told CNN. “If you start when Covid-19 leaves society, it will be too late. With this project we are very positive and we will have a summer of joy, of football, of music. So, start planning now sooner. . “

Despite the apparent threat of this attempt to unlock its borders, Denmark is currently living under its strictest Covid-19 exclusion to date amid growing concerns about the spread of the Kent strain of the virus identified in the UK .

This means that everyone entering the country must set up a negative Covid test and be quarantined on arrival. Restaurants, bars and hairdressers are all closed with more than five people banned.

The European Football Championship, which Denmark will host this summer, feels like a very distant prospect.

How will Denmark’s “passport” of Covid-19 work?

At least four ready-made solutions exist broadly on two types of technology. One relies on remote cloud servers where information is stored in bulk. The others use blockchain, a more complex system that can better protect privacy.

Because personal medical data is so sensitive, it’s a tricky decision. That is why many European countries covered by strict EU privacy laws seem desperate for someone else to go first.

Digital toolbox

The high level of investment in the development of Covid passport systems indicates a high level of optimism in the private sector that it will become a common way to open borders.

The International Air Transport Association has been working on one since the end of 2020. Others with options ready include the nonprofit Commons Project Foundation, computer giant IBM and secure ID company Clear.

Some of these applications – such as the Commons Project’s cloud-designed CommonPass – are currently used to a limited extent by airlines.

IBM, which has been working on a global team on its Digital Health Pass for nine months, uses QR codes that can be updated to reveal all kinds of medical data that may be useful as the pandemic progresses.

“This is a global initiative, and we’ve put it in a toolbox for any government to use,” says Carsten Storner of IBM Denmark. “It’s not just vaccines. We’ve opened it up to store all relevant data for Covid-19. It’s also your test results, your antigen test and who knows what the future will hold in terms of variants.”

Denmark’s planned passport will first be introduced to business travelers, and eager to rekindle foreign trade, which accounts for a third of its GDP.

Mette Dobel, regional president of the cement and mining firm FLSmidth, knows how important it is for her staff to open the way to new markets and maintain existing customer relationships.

“We’re a business that can’t be run by a web store,” she tells CNN. “The face-to-face conversation, especially about often relatively large projects, is necessary. We have 300 people traveling in Denmark at all times. We have to get our people to travel.”

Once the business sector is up and running, the hope is that Denmark’s hospitality and mass entertainment sectors can then accept the coronavirus passport.

Divide society

With a strong digital culture, Denmark can be the perfect test ground for this new technology.

But not everyone welcomes the concept, and there are fears that it could create a two-tier society that harms the non-vaccinated.

“I am against it because I am breastfeeding. I think the passport will make it difficult for those who do not have the vaccine or do not want to navigate in society. I will divide us into an A-team and a B-team. team, “she says.

Peder Hvelplund, an elected official and health spokesperson for the political group Red-Green Alliance, asks why the country cannot wait until everyone is vaccinated in the summer, which is only a few months away.

“The question is whether it makes sense at all,” he says. “The more people we vaccinate, the more the reproduction rate will go down. It’s in the interest of business to reopen to everyone and get as many people used as possible.”

Business leaders are divided on the subject.

Trade institutions are pushing for a passport scheme as soon as possible, but restaurants such as Philip Helgstrand, owner of the Restaurant Strandhotellet in Dragoer, a port town south of Copenhagen, are unhappy.

Helgstrand says it is not feasible for small businesses to check and handle the Covid data of each customer, especially not for overseas travelers such as the passengers of the cruise ship who once made up a large portion of its customers before the pandemic .

“I do not think it is fair for us to ask everyone who comes into the restaurant,” he says. “We have to ask ‘do you have a mask? Don’t sit too close to this and that.’ It must belong to border control and that the police must see the passport. ‘

These arguments are not unique to Denmark.

Last year, the advocacy group Privacy International warned that explosion by vaccines “should not be seen as opportunistic, as there is still data,” and warned that “until everyone has access to an effective vaccine, such passports for service delivery will be unfair. . ”

There are also concerns about how Covid passports might work worldwide.

Following the acquisition and implementation of coronavirus vaccines, the EU’s next crisis may focus on standardizing immunization records to protect the most important of the bloc’s principles: the Schengen Agreement on freedom of movement.

If each country follows a different approach or has to adopt a Covid-19 passport and choose different systems, things can quickly get messy.

International project

It seems to be influenced by the financial statements of each Member State.

Greece, which lost 70% of its tourism revenue last year, is reportedly planning a Covid passport, just like Sweden. Hungary and Poland also both have some form of digital immunity documentation.

The most powerful countries in Europe, Germany and France, have not yet supported such an initiative, despite similar laws already in place for other viral diseases such as yellow fever.

In a newly broken Britain, where more than 14 million people have already had their first dose of vaccine, the concept of a coronavirus passport has received little support, although it is still debated.

Denmark is aware that the success of its passport lies in whether other countries do recognize it and not just within the EU bloc.

“Of course it is important that the passport will be recognized in other countries and that it must now be secured,” said Kofod, the Danish foreign minister.

Lars Sandahl Sørensen of the Confederation Danish Industry sees room for the UN and the WHO to get involved in a kind of certification process. Without it, he says, Denmark will be cut off from what it has to do.

“Denmark is a nation that trades with and trades with the rest of the world,” he says. ‘We live off that interaction with the world, so it stops a society like the Danish.

“We want it to be an international project. We want to be able to communicate with other countries. But we are starting in Denmark to show that it can be done – mobility in the country, but also abroad.”