The world has long had a system of paper vaccination certificates providing proof of, for instance, Yellow Fever inoculation to be allowed to travel to certain areas. As entry requirements all over the world evolve in conjunction with the global inoculation drive, concerns are that fraudulent vaccination certificates will become more prevalent. A collective, digital, modular solution such as IATA’s Travel Pass can help counteract that.
Verifiability the holy grail
Authorities such as Interpol and cybercrime experts from all over the world warn that criminals are already making and circulating fraudulent COVID-vaccine certificates. Several instances have proven that some people are willing to travel with fake test results, and many countries are showing alarming tendencies towards vaccine scepticism.
As the world will open up to those who have had the jab but not to those who haven’t, the market for fake inoculation certifications is expected to increase. Thus, confidence and verifiability become key to rebooting travel, even as the vaccine rollout continues around the world.
“Passengers, government, and airlines need to have confidence in the testing environment and be able to, and this comes back to the keyword, which is always ‘verifiability.’ Everybody needs to be confident in the system which is in place,” IATA said in its Travel Pass Briefing seen by Simple Flying.
Modules allow for interoperability
IATA’s travel pass will enable authorized laboratories and agencies to send test and vaccination certificates directly through the application. As the Travel Pass is programmed in modules, the ‘Lab App’ part is interoperable with other solutions – such as national systems of verification – and based on set international standards.
The passenger will then be able to share their credentials directly with airlines or border controls that receive instant verification of authenticity. Thus, IATA’s Travel Pass, currently being trialled with airlines worldwide, will create a collective, global solution, supposedly more secure than an IT-system hotchpotch of national agencies.
Unifying national systems
Several countries, such as Israel, Denmark, Sweden, and China, are rolling out their own digital vaccine passports. At the moment, however, most health agencies such as the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) provides recipients with a physical proof-of-inoculation card.
Even if countries such as the USA will surely eventually get around to developing a digital verification system, poorer countries such as those provided the vaccine via COVAX will not necessarily have the budget to set up national systems of their own.
Moreover, even if every single country was to develop a system of their own, diplomatic distrust and question marks surrounding privacy and data collection may cause insurmountable doubt between actors to link their systems with one another.
What do you think will be the key components in verifying the validity of vaccinations between countries? Is there sufficient trust in varying systems – and vaccines – for a solution such as IATA’s to convince governments to open up?
