Digital Health Certificates; what are they, and how will they become part of our current reality?

BY SIMONE J. SMITH

“We need to further harmonize policies and standards and establish ‘fast tracks’ to facilitate the orderly flow of personnel. China has proposed a global mechanism on the mutual recognition of health certificates based on nucleic acid test results in the form of internationally accepted QR codes.”
President Xi Jinping

We are coming upon a time where our daily routine may be entirely dependent on a smartphone app. Everything from: leaving your home, taking the subway, entering restaurants and shopping malls, going to work, all your movements dependent on the colour that appears on your phone: green you are free to proceed. Amber or red, you can’t pass go.

This is the life for hundreds of millions of people in China, and if the world governments decide, this might be the life for people all over the world. The Chinese government is now using a colour-based “health code” system to monitor people’s movements and in their words, to stop the spread of the coronavirus. Authorities have not made the health codes compulsory, but if and when they do, citizens without the app will not be able to leave their residential compounds or enter most public places.

Let’s take a look at how it works. To obtain a health code, citizens have to fill in their personal information including: their name, national identity number or passport number, and phone number on a sign-up page. They have to report their travel history and whether they have come into contact with any confirmed or suspected COVID-19 patients in the past fourteen days. They also need to tick the boxes for any symptoms they might have: fever, fatigue, dry cough, stuffy nose, running nose, throat ache or diarrhea.

Authorities then verify this information; each user assigned a QR code in red, amber or green. If you have a red code, you have to go into government quarantine or self-quarantine for fourteen days. If you have an amber code, you are quarantined for seven days. Users with a green code can move around the city freely.

The health codes also serve as a tracker for people’s moves in public areas. Residents have to have their QR codes scanned as they enter public places. They do this so if a confirmed case is diagnosed, authorities are able to quickly backtrack where the patient has been and identify people who have been in contact with that individual.

The health app is not perfect; it can make mistakes and assign users the wrong colour code that forces the wrong people into quarantine. In Hangzhou (the city where the Alipay health codes were first introduced) some residents have complained on social media that they were given the red code for the wrong reason. If they complained about any symptoms: stuffy nose or fatigue on the sign-up page, it was designated red despite the fact that they are also symptoms for the common cold and flu.

There are also some concerns about privacy. The health codes rely on data the authorities have collected from individuals including their: personal information, location, travel history, recent contacts and health status. How will this information be utilized in the future, is the question to be asked by concerned citizens.

President Xi Jinping has called for world leaders to introduce COVID-19 health passports using QR codes, as a way to restart international travel. According to President Xi COVID-19, “has exposed the deficiencies of global governance.”

Singapore launched a contact-tracing smartphone app, which allows authorities to identify people who have been exposed to COVID-19 patients, and the Japanese government is considering the adoption of a similar app. Moscow has also introduced a QR code system to track movements and enforce the lockdowns.

The U.K. government is planning for a digital code that will allow people to access public events, based on whether they have received a COVID-19 vaccine or not.

The U.S. Government and drug companies are planning to track vaccine recipients in case they report any serious side effects. It is their way of replacing some testing safeguards.

The CDC has established coronavirus monitoring measures, which include surveys tracked through a smartphone app developed by the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC plans to send daily texts to people who get vaccinated, send them to web surveys to self-report other potential symptoms following vaccination.

The World Economic Forum also launched the Common Trust Network in collaboration with a broad voluntary network of public and private stakeholders. According to the World Economic Forum, The Common Trust Network is designed to:

(1) Empower individuals with digital access to their health information

(2) Make it easier for individuals to understand and comply with each destination’s requirements

(3) Help ensure that only verifiable lab results and vaccination records from trusted sources are presented for the purposes of cross-border travel and commerce.

So this is it everyone; the future is upon us. The plans for worldwide surveillance have been enacted, and once again we have a choice. Is this how we want to live our lives? Do we want our lives dictated, and monitored by a set of individuals who for the most part are not even following their own rules?