Some airlines offer pre-flight Covid-19 testing. For those that don’t, there remains the problem of how to verify a traveler’s Covid-19 status without asking for personal health information.
Enter CommonPass. Developed by The Commons Project Foundation with support from the World Economic Forum, the pass is an independent app that collects a user’s Covid-19 status and verifies his or her identity. It then produces a unique QR verification code that airlines and countries can rely on as proof the traveler doesn’t have the virus.
United Airlines hosted a trial of the app on flight UA15 from London Heathrow to Newark this past week. The flight was the second global and first transatlantic test. (The app was first rolled out on a Cathay Pacific Airways flight between Hong Kong and Singapore.)
According to the CEO of The Commons Project, it was “a very successful trial. Additional CommonPass tests are planned with other major airlines around the world in November and December.
The process is fairly simple. A passenger takes a rapid COVID test at the departure airport and the results are automatically uploaded to the app and reflected in a QR code, which can then be scanned by the traveler’s airline and the immigration officials in the traveler’s destination country.
The CommonPass app is designed to conform to local travel rules, and adjusts for each traveler based on his or her destination. For example, it distinguishes between a country requiring a test 24-hours before departure and one that allows a test 72-hours before flying. In addition, travelers can upload COVID test results from both local clinics and ones at the airport.
If the trials go well, the next step is to get airlines—and countries—to sign on to use the technology, with a goal of having the app available to all travelers in select markets by early 2021. No word yet on whether travelers would have to pay to use CommonPass.
And if the app doesn’t work…
A recent trial at Helsinki Airport has shown three sniffer dogs were statistically as accurate as invasive covid-19 tests in detecting the virus among passengers. Test results detected 0.6% of travelers were infected with covid-19, with over 16,000 sampled. The dogs? Yep, 0.6 percent.
The trial results are preliminary; it hasn’t yet been analyzed whether dog detections match up identically with lab tested covid-19 positive cases. Final results are expected before the end of the year.
I hope the sniffer dogs work! Lab results or rapid test results can take anywhere from 10 minutes to five days, while dog detections are near instantaneous—and important for travelers and airports alike—are free. Well, minus the cost of food and lodging for those hard-working pooches.
Twist’s Take: The CommonPass app and sniffer dogs may be two keys that will unlock countries to foreign visitors by early 2021.
