After months of deliberation, federal officials announced Wednesday that Canada will be getting a COVID-19 vaccine passport for international travel that is expected to be ready in the fall.

If the exchange of health status is to become a requirement for reopening our economies and borders, then members of the Good Health Pass Collaborative (GHPC) believe it is our responsibility to ensure that the technical ecosystem works for everyone: individuals, organizations, and governments. This is version 1.0 of GHP Interoperability Blueprint by the Interoperability Working Group.

Quebec will require its citizens to carry a “vaccine passport” as of Sept. 1 that would serve to exclude those who have not received two doses. Health Minister Christian Dubé stressed the passports would only be mandated in regions that experience outbreaks and would not be needed to access essential services.

Ever since the Covid pandemic started in 2020, various groups have seen verifiable credentials as a means for providing a secure, privacy-respecting system for health and travel data sharing. This post explores the ecosystem of ecosystems that is emerging as hundreds of organizations around the world rise to the challenge of implementing a globally interoperable system that also respects individual choice and privacy.

I wanted to share the Good Health Pass Blueprint - we have opened up for public review until June 17th. We would love folks from the community to take a good look at this and give us feedback. Here is a link to the wiki with the document and a form to fill out to give feedback.

Today, the EU Digital COVID Certificate has reached another important milestone with the go-live of the technical system at EU level, which allows to verify certificates in a secure and privacy-friendly way. The EU certificate was proposed by the Commission to resume safe travelling this summer. It will be free of charge, secure and accessible to all. Available in digital format or on paper, it will be a proof that a person has been vaccinated against COVID-19, tested negative, or recovered from an infection.

Vaccine passports are being considered by some governments and businesses as a means of allowing a return to something more closely resembling normal life. Canada’s Privacy Commissioners have decided to make a statement at this time in an effort to ensure that privacy is considered at the earliest opportunity as part of any discussions about vaccine passport development.

The NHS app launched on Monday May 17th will be used to demonstrate COVID-19 vaccination status. However, guidance on the UK government website says: “There are not many countries that currently accept proof of vaccination. So for the time being, most people will still need to follow other rules when travelling abroad – like getting a negative pre-departure test.”

This blog post describes ten separable concerns for COVID-19 vaccine credentials, and responsive design strategies.

Discussions amongst EU member states on how to approach plans for digital vaccination certificates are taking place in a new "ad-hoc working group", a format that is not likely to foster transparency - particularly given that the group has said it will not be keeping "minutes as such".

What may appear to be temporary public health-related measures could risk embedding permanent digital identity infrastructure that threatens public life.

Andy Slavitt (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) said during a White House COVID-19 briefing: "[...] the government here is not viewing its role as the place to create a passport, nor a place to hold the data of citizens. We view this as something that the private sector is doing and will do. What's important to us, and we're leading an interagency process right now to go through these details, are that some important criteria be met with these credentials."

More corona news discussed on Slack:

• World leaders call for international pandemic treaty
  
• Indigenous Peoples' Data During COVID-19: From External to Internal
  
• New York rolls out COVID-19 passports based on IBM blockchain technology

As the vaccination roll-out accelerates around the world, many countries are starting to think about how they can enable vaccinated citizens to travel and visit public places such as restaurants and sports stadiums. The EU has unveiled its proposed digital vaccine passport in time for the summer tourism season.
Other Vaccine Passport articles this week were:

• The “vaccine passport” zemblanity
  
• EU's proposal for "Digital green certificates"
  

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Monday said the EU executive would propose a digital vaccination passport later this month. Members states will then decide whether to press ahead with the scheme to allow each other to recognize citizens' proof of vaccination.

As governments roll-out mass COVID-19 vaccination programmes, debate has grown on the issue of vaccine passports and status apps.

I sat down with Kaliya Young and Lucy Yang, directors of CCI, an open community, which brings together more than 300 technologists, academics and healthcare professionals from more than 100 organizations. CCI recently joined Linux Foundation Public Health (LFPH) to make a difference in a space that demands technological innovation and efficacy.

IBM Digital Health Pass and Salesforce Work.com to help businesses, schools and governments as they strive to reopen safely in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet another health pass with organisation centric analytics.

Estonian Prime Minister Jüri Ratas, WHO Director General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus announced yesterday an international partnership to build a trusted COVID-19 Vaccination Certification Infrastructure, accelerating recovery from the global pandemic.

IATA announced that it is in the final development phase of the IATA Travel Pass, a digital health pass that will support the safe reopening of borders.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has called for a "global mechanism" that would use QR codes to open up international travel. The codes will be used to help establish a traveller's health status. But Human Rights advocates warn that the codes could be used for "broader political monitoring and exclusion".

Spikes in coronavirus across the world are once again impacting the tourism industry. But one start-up has a possible solution – an app which acts as a health passport to prove travellers are virus-free.

Immunity Passports have become a much hyped tool to cope with this pandemic and the economic crisis. Essentially, with immunity passports those who are 'immune' to the virus would have some kind of certified document - whether physical or digital.