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COVID Report Verification Assists Travel Industry

Digital COVID Pass is an AI-powered solution that can help not just travel but all other public facilities in verifying COVID results.

By James EfronPublished 3 years ago 4 min read
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Digital COVID Pass for Automated COVID test verification

The travel industry has encountered approximately the greatest visible conflicts during the Covid-19 pandemic. Cruises have turned out to be routes of Covid-19 spread, the travel industry has laid off employees and theme parks have faced massive losses and become turning points for criticism as they’ve reopened during the COVID-19 pandemic. The deteriorating condition of coronavirus has required regulatory authorities to enforce limitations on numerous sectors to control the spread of the disease. Several countries of the world have restricted passengers from travelling and the United Kingdom is one of them. As stated by the law, nobody can travel abroad for leisure or vocational purposes. Passengers will be asked to show their negative test before onboarding, and transport operatives might deny boarding if required. The reports must be authenticated to make sure that travellers are not using false or tampered reports for deceiving the checks. The process is manual right now and requires at least an hour as stated by the BBC reports.

Due to the rise of technological advancements during the COVID-19 pandemic, manual testing and verification of the results is an unsuitable solution.

Why is COVID Report Verification dire need for the hour?

Authorities have revealed that the travel industry must inquire about COVID-19 test results before onboarding travellers. Authorized passengers will need to take their test 72 hours before departure, and this will apply regardless of whether a state is on the travel list. However, COVID-19 results from any lab are not acceptable though travellers can ask the airport health facility to conduct the test or acquire results from authorised clinics. There is a high chance of false results from local laboratories that criminals will use as legal reports for tricking airport authorities.

Though there are a limited number of exceptions such as minors under 11, airport employees, passengers in transit, and those who are travelling from countries without the infrastructure accessible to carry the tests of COVID-19.

Therefore, authentication of the result is vital at the air terminals. To make sure that all authorized report holders are onboarded, authorities must check machine-readable zone code and make sure the reports are not tampered with or false.

Problems with Manual Report Verification

Listed below are some of the problems that the travel industry is experiencing:

Extra time

It requires a lot of time for employees to extract the data from the code embedded in the report and then convert it into the machine-readable language. The codes differ from one lab to another. To encrypt each code requires extra time and manually executing these tasks acquires a lot of time and energy. Due to this, travellers have to wait up to 24 hours to get the results authenticated. This might result in travellers getting late for their flight.

The rise in costs

One of the biggest disadvantages of manual systems is the cost associated with them. The COVID-19 test costs spread to increase, significantly beyond in-network costs and hence affecting affordability. These costs add up which causes a substantial fee to many passengers.

Prone to destruction

Manual documents might be easily damaged, misplaced, erroneous, or taken. A natural disaster or fire could imply the loss of COVID-19 reports. If you don’t have a backup of the results, it might jeopardize the passengers from onboarding. Once the data is gone, there is no way of receiving the data back.

Digital COVID Pass – A Perfect Solution

The travel industry may encounter a lot of penalties after imposters get what they came for. Digital COVID Pass assists all the airports in authenticating COVID test results along with fighting the above-mentioned problems. Facial recognition technology is one way of fighting criminals that will enable authorities to recognize imposters before they cause any damage and that no passengers have shown any fake results before onboarding. The automated solution does not need any pre-installation and the traveller can register their results through their front camera on the browser.

Fewer Documentation Requirements

It will reduce the need for airports to acquire extensive documentation. To verify the identity of a traveller, airport authorities must verify passenger’s facial scans against one of their ID documents. The API for authenticating the validity of COVID-19 reports will be installed in the touchless kiosk and the traveller has to show the report for authentication. Optical character recognition will extract information within seconds, the authorities will be alarmed if the passenger must be permitted to travel or not. Biometric authentication can be used at each touchpoint of the journey to ensure seamless integration and to make travel more secure.

It All Narrows Down To…

As the spread of the virus is increasing, airports and travellers need to be safe from the COVID-19 pandemic. The travel industry has automated the procedures and passengers are instructed to submit COVID negative results that are not older than three days. Robust security is dire of the hour, and IDV is one of the precautionary measures that this sector can adopt. Artificial intelligence-powered facial recognition technology and COVID report verification will leave no chance for imposters to leave a country without submitting negative COVID test results. Passengers need to comply with the new regulations and airports to establish safer practices.

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About the Creator

James Efron

James Efron is a tech enthusiast, currently serving as infosecurity management expert at Shufti Pro. In previous roles, he has designed organisational strategies for tech firms.

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