The technology giant wishes to make it much easier to travel the entire world once again.
Microsoft is joining forces with technology companies and health associations to start developing an electronic COVID-19 vaccination passport. The electronic vaccination passport will be made available globally and may become a new benchmark for global traveling in the post-pandemic world.
Digital Vaccination Passport On Your Pocket
The Vaccination Credential Initiative (VCI) is a coalition of leading technology businesses and health care organizations trying to empower transparent vaccination record passports.
The concept is that as soon as you’ve got a COVID-19 vaccination, you can take an electronic verification of this vaccination. The electronic vaccination passport will allow you to travel, come back to school and work, and other “ordinary” tasks currently limited based on this COVID-19 pandemic.
VCI’s vision is to enable people to acquire an encrypted electronic copy of the immunization credentials to shop at an electronic wallet of the selection. Those without smartphones can get a paper published with QR codes comprising W3C verifiable credentials.
Microsoft is one of the firms joining the VCI. Other technology businesses comprise Oracle and Salesforce connected by health organizations, such as The Commons Project, The Mayo Clinic, and Safe Health.
Paul Meyer, CEO of The Commons Project Foundation, affirms that “The aim of the Vaccination Credential Initiative is to enable people with digital access to their own vaccination records,” with an open standard to safeguard the privacy and start to start the entire world back up.
The VCI may utilize the available SMART Health Cards specification, which is being designed as a brief-term solution “to allow a user to get COVID-19 Immunization or laboratory results and present these results to a different party in a verifiable way.”
The Vaccination Credential Initiative will operate together with the World Health Organization (WHO) to guarantee the electronic vaccination passport will gradually become accessible globally.
Vaccination Passports Immediate Privacy Pushback
The introduction and rollout of a worldwide electronic vaccination passport are very likely to prompt apparent pushback.
This kind of initiative’s privacy implications will come under scrutiny, with many claiming that they should not need to disclose their vaccination to anybody, period. It’s difficult not to agree.
But the other side is that some nations may start restricting entry predicated upon COVID-19 vaccination status, particularly if the pandemic does not reveal any indication of abating. Against a backdrop of growing new disease and the numbers of COVID versions, states can require travelers to provide a legitimate digital vaccination passport before the entrance.
As not everybody will have a COVID vaccination (for whatever motive, but we are not getting into this ), it might place further and possibly unnecessary limitations on regular folks.
