Many companies and technology Groups have begun developing smartphone apps or systems for individuals to upload details of Covid-19 tests and vaccinations, and create digital credentials that can be viewed for entry to concert venues, stadiums, movie theaters, offices, or even countries.
In an effort to meet one of the challenges related to returning to normalcy after distributing vaccines on a large scale, developers may now have to face other challenges, ranging from privacy issues to representing the diverse effectiveness of different vaccines. But a more pressing challenge may simply be avoiding the disjointed implementation and mixed success of an earlier technology attempt to address a public health crisis: contact tracing apps.
“If we are successful, you should be able to say: I got a vaccination certificate on my phone that I got when I got vaccinated in a country, with a whole set of health management practices for them … that I use Get on a plane to a completely different country, and then in that new country I presented vaccination credentials so that I could go to the concert that was taking place indoors and in which attendance was limited to those who showed they got the vaccine, ”said Brian Behlendorf, director Executive of the Linux Foundation.
“It should be interoperable in the same way that e-mail is interoperable, He said in the same way that the web is interoperable. “At the moment, we’re in a situation where there are some moving parts that get us closer to that, but I think there’s a sincere commitment from everyone in the industry.”
“For us it is [about] How these digital credentials can be stored, can be presented, not only through smartphones but also in other ways to those people who do not have stable internet access and also who do not own smart phones, ”said Lucy Yang, Co-Leader of the Covid Credentials Initiative- 19. “We’re looking at it, and there are companies that are really doing promising.
Once a vaccine passport is built, companies will need to make sure people are comfortable with using it. This means confronting concerns about handling private medical information.
CommonPass, IBM, and Linux Foundation all emphasized privacy as the center 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 the authorities.
With vaccines manufactured by multiple companies in many countries in different stages of development, there are a lot of variables that passport makers will need to consider.
Dr Julie Parsonet, an infectious disease specialist at Stanford University, says it’s also unclear how effective vaccines are in stopping transmission of the virus. So, while a vaccine passport app shows that you received the shot, it may not be a guarantee to attend an event or ride a ride safely.
“We still don’t know if the vaccinated people could transmit the infection or not,” she told CNN Business. “Until that is clarified, we will not know if the ‘passports’ will be effective.”
However, Behlendorf predicts that vaccine passports will be rolled out and approved very quickly once everything is in place, and he expects that a variety of applications that can work together will be “widely available” during the first half of 2021.
He said “Rest assured, the nerds of her.”
