- [Narrator] With air travel inching back
from its collapse during the pandemic,
Americans might be able to fly to Europe this summer.
That is if you're vaccinated.
Exactly how this new era of pandemic travel will work
is still up in the air
but there's one approach a lot of people are talking about.
- Vaccine passports.
- COVID passports.
- [Reporter] Vaccines passports.
- [Reporter] A COVID passport.
- [Narrator] The so-called vaccine passports
or digital health pass systems aim
to revive the tourism industry,
allow people to attend concerts and events
and get back to the office.
But creating a coordinated health pass system
is so fraught with logistical
and ethical conflicts that it could take years to pull off.
Startups, nonprofits and governments
have already rolled out different kinds
of digital health passes,
from Israel's Green Pass
to an app that allows access to holy sites in Mecca.
But so far, there's no single pass
that's used all across the world.
So what would it take for digital health passes
to get people back in the air again
and out in the world?
- This is really an unprecedented situation
in the modern global economy.
- [Narrator] Julie Wernau reports on the impact
of COVID-19 on business for The Wall Street Journal.
- Really the goal of these systems
is to make people feel safe enough
to resume normal, everyday activities.
Everything from eating inside at a restaurant,
or going to a concert venue or traveling.
- [Narrator] The idea is to have an official digital record
of your COVID history that when you travel,
authorities can check and determine how likely it is
that you're carrying the virus.
The big challenge is making something
that's accepted across borders
and stays updated with other countries' COVID regulations.
Several groups, including privacy advocates,
businesses and healthcare providers
have proposed solutions.
One of those stakeholders is Dakota Gruener.
She's leading a coalition of over 150 partners,
including all the major health pass providers,
to create a set of global standards
to underpin digital health passes.
She says there are a few main features
every digital health pass should have.
The first is something called interoperability,
meaning it should work
across different institutions and borders.
- A person can be tested or vaccinated
wherever it is that they live.
And get to an airport or get to a border
and have that pass be seamlessly recognized and trusted.
- [Narrator] Say you're traveling from New York to London.
A successful app would tell you the latest guidelines
for both cities and integrate
your official COVID health records from each country.
Airlines are trying out different options,
like CommonPass, VeriFLY and IATA Travel Pass.
But most trials are limited to select routes
and passengers aren't required to use the pass.
So it's hard to tell how it would work on a mass scale.
- The reality is that so far,
we're not really seeing this
in a very mandatory way very many places
because people don't even know
how to mandate it
and they don't know what counts as proof or evidence
that you've been vaccinated.
- [Narrator] Also key to health passes,
according to Gruener,
are verifiable health records.
These include things like vaccine certificates,
as well as pass COVID test results in past cases.
- If you can have both proof of testing
or proof of vaccination,
that allows people flexibility.
If they can't be vaccinated,
perhaps they can be tested.
- [Narrator] In a digital health pass system,
health records would need to be uploaded
to the app and accessible to different authorities,
like physicians or border agents for different uses.
Experts say consumers should be in control
of how much health data they share and with whom.
For example, you might choose
to share more health information
with a doctor giving you your second vaccine dose
and less data with the airline you're checking in with
at the airport.
- We think that this idea
of selective disclosure is really important
because it would allow me
to share just the minimum information necessary.
- [Narrator] When that information is shared,
authorities need to know that they can trust it.
That's where another key factor comes in,
verifiable credentials.
- And that is literally a packet of data
that is verified,
that you can say this has been signed and sealed
and I know the packet of data
has not been tampered with
and I know who it was who's attesting
to this packet of data.
- [Narrator] But in order for digital health passes
to be embraced by both government and regular people,
they need to address the ongoing debate over data privacy.
- In America, privacy and health privacy
has always been a huge hot button issue
and people are concerned about sharing even that amount
of information and want to know
that that record is safe.
- [Narrator] Some groups have been advocating
for centralizing health data since before COVID-19.
But resistance to sharing this data
has extended to the current pandemic.
Several states, including Texas,
have banned having to show proof of vaccination,
including vaccine passports.
- Government should not require any Texan
to show proof of vaccination
and reveal private health information
just to go about their daily lives.
- [Narrator] Cybersecurity experts
and Israel's Public Health Union
have raised concerns about sharing sensitive health data.
- This is a messy ecosystem.
There're a huge number of potential issuers
of a health pass.
Testing centers, vaccinators, states
and also a huge number of potential verifiers.
The airlines, border control agencies.
- [Narrator] Workplaces and employers
are also considering tracking health records.
One MERCER survey found
that almost 51% of companies
are either currently tracking
their employees' vaccination status
or are considering it.
While individual states are taking different approaches
to regulating vaccine passports,
big tech is laying out some guidelines
for COVID-related apps too.
Apple has said COVID-19 app developers need
to work with recognized government
or health authorities before submitting to Apple.
And Google has a list of additional requirements
for COVID-19 apps going into its Play Store.
Still because there are so many apps out there right now,
the exact privacy policy
could vary slightly from each app.
What's more, some health officials contend
that tech companies are over complicating the process.
And this health information could be stored
in a much simpler form, like in a QR code.
And there are bigger questions about how these apps
will be used together.
Some apps, like the IATA Travel Pass
and VeriFLY are focused on the travel industry,
while others like Israel's Green Pass
or New York's Excelsior Pass
are being used to grant people access
to events or spaces.
- The concern that essentially by asking people
to prove that they've been vaccinated
in order to do very normal things
like go to work or attend a concert,
that we're creating a system
in which there are two classes of people,
the vaccinated and the unvaccinated.
- Policy is as important as the technology
and we need policymakers to define the range
of acceptable use cases
and specifically, define what is not an acceptable use case
for a health pass.
- [Narrator] Exactly where that line is
is still being worked out
and finding that balance
is going to be crucial for international travel,
business and public health.
(dramatic music)