CommonsPass, a digital health passport is aimed at making international travel easier and safer, without breaching a passenger’s privacy. By Tanvi Jain
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In an attempt to make cross-border travel safe, the World Economic Forum in collaboration with The Commons Project has come up with the concept of CommonsPass, a digital health platform, which will allow travellers to carry their COVID-19 test results in a global format, hence enabling easy passage during international travel.
“In collaboration with The Commons Project, a non-profit public trust building global digital services and platforms for the common good, the World Economic Forum is supporting the development and launch of CommonPass, an initiative which aims to develop a global, interoperable framework to safely restore cross-border travel to pre-pandemic levels,” weforum.org recently revealed on its official website.
Moreover, the digital health platform is even ready to be tried this week, and airlines such as Cathy Pacific and United Airlines, have reportedly volunteered to test them on flights between New York, London, Singapore and Hong Kong. And, post these trials, the CommonPass will be introduced in other airlines across Asia, Africa, America, Europe and the Middle East as well.
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“For global travel and trade to return to pre-pandemic levels, travellers will need a secure and verifiable way to document their health status as they travel and cross borders. Countries will need to be able to trust that a traveller’s record of a COVID PCR test or vaccination administered in another country is valid. Countries will also need the flexibility to update their health screening entry requirements as the pandemic evolves and science progresses. Airlines, airports and other travel industry stakeholders will need the same. The Commons Project together with The World Economic Forum is working to initiate the CommonPass framework to address those challenges,” thecommonsproject.org further said.
The travellers will have to first take the COVID-19 test from a certified lab and upload the results on the CommonPass app. After this, they will also need to complete health screening questionnaires by the destination country. Once all this is done, and the traveller’s compliance with the destination’s entry criteria has been confirmed, a QR code will be generated, which will be scanned by the airlines.
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“The CommonPass framework will allow individuals to access their lab results and vaccination records, and consent to have that information used to validate their COVID status without revealing any other underlying personal health information. The framework will assess whether the individual’s lab test results or vaccination records come from a trusted source, and satisfy the health screening requirements of the country they want to enter,” thecommonsproject.org added.
Reports also suggest, that one plus point about this new technology is that it is being closely observed by the by US Customs and Border Protection and US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Related: Indians May Get E-Passports By 2021 After Successful Completion Of 20K Trials