Country with Vaccine Passport
After a global pandemic and lockdowns due to Covid-19, the idea of a vaccine passport has gained the attention of the government to start air travel and recontinue the deactivated world. As the world successfully brought Covid-19 vaccines to its inhabitants, the governments could think about the concept of the vaccine passports.
With a vaccine passport, one can travel to countries that are allowing vaccine passports. The vaccine passport is simply a certification that the holder is vaccinated against the novel Corona Virus. With complete vaccination, the person is allowed to travel beyond his country. Even though the vaccination certificate is in paper form now, soon it will be converted to digital format.
This opportunity might turntable in the pandemic and let the countries open their borders to the vaccinated individuals. This has a possibility to create discrimination among the vaccinated workers and non-vaccinated workers. The government is still in the process to set all the rules of the vaccine passport.
Under present circumstances, not all the countries in the world are permitting the vaccine passport. US government is not gonna permit the passport anytime soon. Again China has already taken initiative to let people holding a vaccine passport in their border. Emirates and Etihad had signed a partnership with the IATA (International Air Transport Association) to try out the new travel passport.
Most of the countries are not open to tourism and upon arrival, travelers must follow the restrictions set by the destination country with or without the vaccine passport. Several countries of the EU have already issued introduced the passport. Countries including Poland, Estonia, Denmark, Iceland, Spain, Greece, Cyprus, Portugal, Italy, and the UK are accepting vaccine passports from their immigrants.
Other than the European Union the following countries have already included the vaccine passport system in their travel policy. Only proof of vaccination is needed for the below countries. And sometimes the traveler must have himself tested after reaching the lands of the destination country but in most cases, he would not need to go through quarantine.
- Antigua and Barbuda
- Bangladesh
- Belize
- Bermuda
- Ghana
- Guatemala
- Iceland
- Lebanon
- Lithuania
- Moldova
- Qatar
- Romania
- Seychelles
- Slovakia
- Slovenia
- Tajikistan
The IATA travel pass will allow passengers from both of the airlines, Etihad and Emirates, a digital passport and perform a Covid-19 test to verify the healthiness of the passenger for the travel. The traveler can use the digital passport on the lands of the country as well.
Automated processing:
"All Airlines understand that it will be a difficult task of ground duty operations if they have to manage proper documentation and travel requirements for COVID- 19, like test results and vaccine certifications. The same thing goes in case of border authorities. The UK is one of the leading countries trying to restart international travel at scale. This real life proof should encourage other countries that the airline industry has various digital solutions that will easily absorb the pressure of incorporating health certificate checks into the travel process and borders. This is a good chance for all of us to work with the UK government, to show the world that the solutions work and showing that we have created an efficient system that will help the world to grow at a faster pace again." said Nick Careen, IATA's Senior Vice President Airport , Passenger, Cargo, Security.
Global Standards:
The vaccine certifications or standardisation of test and their acceptance by the authorities is the key to gain maximum advantage from IATA travel pass and to avoid any sort of confusion and inconvenience for passengers.In a recent poll created by IATA, it is found that 89 percent people want global standards and 80 percent are interested to use a mobile app to manage their travel credentials. ICAO has moved one step closer to set global standards for testing and vaccination certifications last friday. Now the governments should come forward and provide a digital COVID-19 vaccination/testing certificate after testing or vaccination. It will provide the passengers a verifiable document on their mobile phone. Also, it will ensure mutual recognition, equivalence and acceptance of COVID-19 certification for the passengers at the time of their journey around the world.