Written by As if lockdown were not bad enough, many of us are now faced with spending the next year with children unable to spend their Gap Year travelling the more exotic parts of the world. The traditional jobs within the entertainment and leisure sectors that could keep them busy, and paid for their travel, are no longer available. The opportunity to spend time with elderly relatives depends on the results of their last COVID-19 test.
I recognize that we are a lucky family to have such ‘problems’. However, they are representative of the issues we all face as we work hard to bring our families, companies and organizations out of lockdown. When can we open up our facilities to our employees, customers and visitors? What protection should we offer those employees that must or choose to work away from home? What is the impact of the CEO travelling abroad to meet new employees or customers, sign that large deal or deliver the keynote at that trade fair in Las Vegas?
It is no longer unusual for a company in the City to regularly test its employees before allowing them to work in their offices and support the additional costs of their commute avoiding public transport.
Billions are being invested in vaccine research and tests to confirm that we have the antibodies to protect us and those with whom we interact. But will that be sufficient? Will it allow you to visit your relatives in the care home, sit inside your favorite restaurant, work in close proximity to your colleagues and/or travel without the need to quarantine for 14 days when you arrive and/or return?
Experience would suggest that over the next year or so a variety of vaccinations and tests will be released, which will work to a greater or lesser extent. The question will be: ‘is the vaccination, or test, recognized by the venue (and their insurers), or country, which you are trying to enter?’
For some organizations, the fact that the COVID-19 tracing application on your phone turns green, will be sufficient. Others will only recognize specific vaccinations and tests and will want to check that the immunizations are still valid. Both will be concerned by the availability of fake immunity certificates. Thus, in parallel with the medical developments, we have to implement a robust and efficient method of sharing and remotely validating the immunity certificates or passports that they will deliver.
Those of us who regularly travel in North Africa and South America are used to handing over our yellow International Certificate of Vaccination or Prophylaxis (ICVP), with our passport, to prove that we had yellow fever vaccine. This program, which is governed by International Health Regulations, could provide the governance framework for the operation of the COVID-19 immunity passports.
Over the last few months, Consult Hyperion has proven that the contactless payment networks, which allow you to use your credit or debit card anywhere in the world, can also be used to share and remotely validate your COVID-19 immunity passport.
Our idea is that anywhere you can use your payment card you can also validate that you have the required immunity to enter the building or country. As with your payment transaction, an organization can choose whether or not to accept your immunity passport based on the:
- Issuer of the immunity passport
- Vaccinations and/or tests administered
- Date when the vaccinations and/or tests were administered
- Potential that the passport is a fake or you are not the genuine passport holder
If required, the organization can also revert to the issuer of the immunity passport to check there and then that your passport is still valid.
The consumer experience delivered by the immunity passport is similar to that of a contactless, Apple Pay or Google Pay transaction. The immunity passport is stored in a secure application in your smartphone or biometric smartcard. When asked to prove your Immunity Status you use your fingerprint to authenticate yourself to your phone/card and then touch your phone/card to a contactless reader. An application on the reader validates your immunity passport and passes only the required information to the restaurateur, owner of the care home or office or border control officer.
From the international community’s perspective, the payment infrastructure over which the immunity passports are shared and remotely validated is in place, proven and robust. It is supported by a raft of rules administered by PCI, which protect the security of personal information, at rest and in flight, within the system. There is an active marketplace for cheap, certified readers, operating secure protocols, which offer Contact Free validation of the immunity passport away from the classical point of sale locations. These include mPOS and SoftPOS solutions which allow a standard mobile phone to be used as a contactless payment terminal, and ruggedized terminals used to validate tickets in high traffic areas, such as the entrance to sports arenas and concert venues.
While the world waits to see if the science supports the ability to establish immunity to COVID-19, and society works through the implications of immune people being able to avoid restrictions which apply to others, we technologists need to prepare the infrastructure that will allow people to share and validate immunity passports.
One of the things I love about working at Consult Hyperion is that we regularly come up with, and deliver, ideas that significantly impact people’s lives – contact and contactless payment cards (worldwide), M-PESA (Kenya), Open Loop Transit Ticketing (London) and more recently SoftPOS (London), just to mention a few. Something tells me that immunity passports will be the next. If you are interested and would like to help deliver the network that will allow life to return to something close to ‘old normal’, please let me know.
