Covid Denmark: Digital passport will allow vaccinated to travel

Denmark plans digital passport that will allow people who have had Covid vaccines to travel

  • Finance minister put forward a ‘digital Corona passport’ for use in the summer
  • Morten Boedskov said it was crucial ‘to be able to restart Danish society’ 
  • He said the passport would be phone application for ease and integration 
  • Similar tech is being made in US for tourists to hold certificates in digital wallets

Denmark is planning a digital passport that will allow people who have had Covid vaccines to travel.  

Finance minister Morten Boedskov said today that ‘in three, four months, a digital corona passport will be ready for use in, for example, business travel’.

‘It is absolutely crucial for us to be able to restart Danish society so that companies can get back on track,’ he said. ‘Many Danish companies are global companies with the whole world as a market.’

Similar technology is being developed in the United States by big names like Microsoft and Oracle to give travellers encrypted digital wallets to hold their vaccination credentials. 

Chaos at Heathrow airport at the end of last month after the government scrapped the electronic passport gates as fears were raised about new variants of Covid

Finance minister Morten Boedskov (centre), CEO of the Danish Chamber of Commerce Brian Mikkelsen (right) and DI Director Lars Sandahl Soerensen hold a news conference in Copenhagen on Wednesday to announce the digital coronavirus passports

Finance minister Morten Boedskov (centre), CEO of the Danish Chamber of Commerce Brian Mikkelsen (right) and DI Director Lars Sandahl Soerensen hold a news conference in Copenhagen on Wednesday to announce the digital coronavirus passports

Before the end of February, citizens in Denmark would be able to view – on a Danish health website – official confirmation of whether they had been vaccinated. 

Mr Boedskov said: ‘It will be the extra passport that you will be able to have on your mobile phone that documents that you have been vaccinated.

‘We can be among the first in the world to have it and can show it to the rest of the world.’

The presentation was made together with representatives of the main business organisations, the Confederation of Danish Industries, which represents Denmark’s major companies, and the Danish Chamber of Commerce.

Meanwhile, the European Commission has been weighing up proposals to issue vaccination certificates to help get travellers to their holiday destinations more quickly and avoid another disastrous summer for Europe’s tourism sector.

But the EU’s executive arm said that for now such certificates would only be used for medical purposes, to monitor the possible adverse effects of vaccines for instance.

Other similar digital passports are being developed to help travellers securely show they have complied with Covid-19 testing requirements.

One, called CommonPass, said it could also track vaccinations and is being tested by US airlines, United Airlines and JetBlue. 

CommonPass is working alongside the Vaccination Credential Initiative (VCI) to deliver encrypted copies of immunisation records in a digital wallet.

VCI includes giants like Microsoft, Salesforce and Oracle, as well as US health care nonprofit Mayo Clinic. 

Vaccination Credential Initiative (VCI) aims to help people get encrypted digital copies of their immunization records stored in a digital wallet. The initiative is building off of The Commons Project Foundation's CommonPass (pictured)

Vaccination Credential Initiative (VCI) aims to help people get encrypted digital copies of their immunization records stored in a digital wallet. The initiative is building off of The Commons Project Foundation’s CommonPass (pictured)

Paul Meyer, chief executive of The Commons Project, said: ‘The goal of the Vaccination Credential Initiative is to empower individuals with digital access to their vaccination records so they can use tools like CommonPass to safely return to travel, work, school, and life, while protecting their data privacy.’

‘Open standards and interoperability are at the heart of VCI’s efforts and we look forward to supporting the World Health Organization and other global stakeholders in implementing and scaling open global standards for health data interoperability.’

However, digital passports and paper credentials are raising concerns among  privacy groups that believe ‘until everyone has access to an effective vaccine, any system requiring a passport for entry or service will be unfair,’ as stated by Privacy International.

‘The vaccine is a public health exercise, and must not be a new discriminator,’ the group shared on its website. 

The group does agree that such records are ‘probably necessary,’ but worries they could ‘open a can of worms.’

‘To what degree does this documentation need to be trusted to be reviewed by other providers? And who else will want access? That is where things get more complicated. And that’s where ambitions lie,’ says Privacy International.