Airline industry launching vaccine passport iOS app

Yes, that is indeed the question: how does authoritative and verifiable info get into the app?

Like the poster above, I have a vaccine card from my county health department. They also texted me a persistent link to a state database certifying that I'm fully COVID vaccinated (hey, age has its privileges, even if they're not numerous). A reasonable person would accept those as authoritative — but how does that conclusion make its way into the app? Obviously not just on my say-so, because otherwise every twenty-something looking to party on the Mayan Riviera would be claiming to have had their shots.

Most people won't be aware of this, but the World Health Organization has long sponsored an "International Certificate of Vaccination or Prophylaxis," colloquially known as the "Yellow Card," that's used by international travelers to demonstrate their vaccination status. These Yellow Cards are issued by the national health authority in each country, which in the case of the USA is the CDC. Blank cards are available (in bulk only) from the US Government Printing Office as document CDC 731. Small quantities at big markups are sold on Amazon. Yellow Card vaccination history is entered by the medical authority administering the inoculation, signed and officially stamped, and is accepted by border control authorities worldwide.

The IATA app needs an authentication process of some sort prior to travel use.

GG1 said:

I would've thought that a superset (or new consortium) of OneWorld, Star, and SkyTeam would be a convenient way to handle this worldwide, as they have the mechanisms in place for this purpose. Not sure about IATA (not doubting them, just not familiar with them). Either way would allow this info to not be tied to any country (to increase adoption).

But I can see that international vaccine verification could be used for much more than travel purposes (and this may be a bad thing).

The potential advantage of IATA is that it's a 75-year-old airline industry organization to which every international airline you've every heard of — and an amazing number you won't have! — already belongs. A UN agency such as the WHO might in theory be better placed for the job, except that we'd probably all be dead of old age before it happened.

neilm said:

GG1 said:

I would've thought that a superset (or new consortium) of OneWorld, Star, and SkyTeam would be a convenient way to handle this worldwide, as they have the mechanisms in place for this purpose. Not sure about IATA (not doubting them, just not familiar with them). Either way would allow this info to not be tied to any country (to increase adoption).

But I can see that international vaccine verification could be used for much more than travel purposes (and this may be a bad thing).

The potential advantage of IATA is that it's a 75-year-old airline industry organization to which every international airline you've every heard of — and an amazing number you won't have! — already belongs. A UN agency such as the WHO might in theory be better placed for the job, except that we'd probably all be dead of old age before it happened.

Thanks, good info. I wasn't familiar with IATA. If every airline belongs to IATA, that is a better body to do this. I don't think every country belongs to WHO (Taiwan is an example). The IATA gets around these political issues.