All travelers wishing to fly to the US must provide proof of a negative Covid-19 test. For the time being, the evidence is in the form of a printout of a test result, or a photograph of the result, which creates opportunities for misunderstandings or possible fraud. Recently launched digital initiatives hope to clear up ambiguity, standardize information and share securely.
International travel is probably the first industry to use new digital passports. One of the first flights embedded in a new ‘digital passport’ with vaccination information and test results took off on Thursday morning, a Qatar Airways flight from Doha to Istanbul.
Flyers log in to the Travel Pass app with FaceID on their smartphone and then take a selfie to grant access. They can then scan their passport using the camera on the phone. From there, passengers can add their itinerary, vaccination certificates and Covid-19 test results.
As part of this trial, passengers in Doha can go to a local medical center, which will send their test results directly to the app. The app shows a green check mark to say that you are ready to travel. The airlines also have access to the backend system, which enables contactless and paperless authentication.
‘What it will do is give people and the authorities the confidence that your documentation is correct that you have been vaccinated. “You do not have to take with you pieces of paper that you can lose and get caught with the authorities,” Akbar Al Baker, CEO of Qatar Airways Group, told NBC News.
The International Air Transport Association, which developed the Travel Pass, as well as the airlines that use it, say the Travel Pass maintains strict restrictions on the privacy of data.
“It will also give you as a passenger confidence that your data you put into the system stays on your smartphone and is not shared with anyone else,” Al Baker said.
More than a dozen airlines have already signed up to test the pass, including Emirates, Singapore Airlines and Qantas. The pass will officially start at the end of March.
Some governments and airlines have started making their own programs or allowing other digital systems. British Airways and the low-cost airline Ryanair have had passengers upload their Covid-19 and vaccination test results along with their other personal booking information when booking online. Al Baker said a multitude of digital passport formats are not ideal.
“We want it to be a standard form that is accepted by the entire world airport community and immigration community,” Al Baker said.
Without the ability to trust Covid-19 tests – and ultimately vaccine records – many countries will feel compelled to maintain full travel bans and mandatory quarantines.
For international travel, governments are likely to need some proof of vaccination in the near future, similar to the way some countries now prescribe vaccination for other diseases, such as yellow fever or polio, say airline executives. But there are currently no plans to enforce those on domestic flights.
“I do not see it happening in the US,” Delta CEO Ed Bastian said in a recent interview with NBC News.
United and American Airlines are both in the IATA Travel Pass advisory group and provide input into the development of the app, but neither has confirmed when they will test the feature.
In October, a United flight from London to Newark ran a test run using a Covid-19 status smartphone-based system called CommonPass.
“Without the ability to trust Covid-19 tests – and ultimately vaccine records – across international borders, many countries will feel compelled to maintain the full travel ban and mandatory quarantines as long as the pandemic continues,” he said. Bradley Perkins, medical chief said. official of The Commons Project, the unprofitable digital platform builder who developed the system, in a statement.
“With reliable individual health data, states can implement more nuanced health screening requirements for admission,” Perkins said.
In January, President Joe Biden issued an executive order asking government agencies to “assess the feasibility of linking the Covid-19 vaccine to international vaccination or profiling certificates” and the ability to make digital versions.
Andy Slavitt, a senior adviser to Biden’s Covid task force, said on Monday that the government has a set of guiding principles on vaccine passports, but does not believe the government should be kept by the government.
Several private sector initiatives are underway, including a partnership between technology companies such as Microsoft and Oracle and healthcare organizations such as the Mayo Clinic, Change Healthcare and Evernorth.
‘It must be private; the data must be secure; access to it must be free; it must be available digitally and in paper, and in several languages; and it must be open source, ”Slavitt said.
Air travel in the US plunged to 60 percent as lock-in orders and travel restrictions curbed non-essential travel.
Glimmers of hope began to emerge as vaccinations increased and infection rates generally declined, although flattening and even rising rates in some areas are a cause for concern. Airline boasted their highest passenger levels this past weekend.
Proponents of privacy and human rights are concerned that the requirement of a digital vaccination passport could create an unfair two-tier system between those who have easy access to it and vaccines and those who do not.
The air travel vaccine passports pose a risk of “inequality” and “false assurance of public safety,” Nita Farahany, a professor of law and philosophy at Duke University, said in an email.
Liberty, the UK’s largest civil liberties organization, warned in a statement: “It is impossible to have immunity passports that do not result in human rights violations.”