Tag Archives: digital green certificate

It’s been a while since I looked at issues regarding the European Union Digital COVID Certificate (EUDCC).

And there are a ton of ramifications and unintended consequences.

Covishield and the EUDCC

When I last looked at the EUDCC, I examined its effect on travel from people outside of the European Union. The question at the time was what would happen to people who were vaccinated with something other than the European Medicines Agency-approved vaccines, thus rendering them ineligible for the EUDCC.

In particular, people who were vaccinated with the Covishield vaccine were not eligible for the EUDCC. Depending upon whom you asked, Covishield is either just the same as the EMA-approved AstraZeneca vaccine (now referred to as “Vaxzervria” in EU-speak), or it has a radically different manufacturing process that disqualifies it from automatic acceptance.

This non-recognition of Covishield has a great impact on African nations, because that vaccine is popular there. However, EUDCC disapproval has been offset by the actions of several individual countries to recognize Covishield as a vaccine. For example, Greece recognizes ten vaccines (including Covishield) as opposed to the EU’s four. Of course, you have to go through additional paperwork to get authorization to enter a specific country.

But Joseph Atick notes that there’s another issue that adversely impacts the ability of Africans to enter Europe.

Linking a vaccination to a person

Assume for the moment that you have received an EU-authorized vaccine. This is only part of the battle, because the act of vaccination has to be tied to you as a person.

And Atick notes one complicating factor in making that link:

One of the biggest barriers to setting up these systems—and one that could greatly complicate digital health certificates – involves traceability, which for an official digital ID means documenting one’s birth event.

In Africa, not everyone has a birth certificate, and many struggle to trace their identity to the birth event.

If you cannot prove to the satisfaction of the European Union (or whoever) that you were the actual person who received a vaccine, then you may face barriers to entering Europe (or wherever).

And what are the ramifications of this?

A digital health certificate has appeal as an efficient and effective way to manage COVID-19 risks. But if we don’t pause now to consider the implications of getting it wrong and look for ways to get it right, these marvellous digital innovations could also be supremely effective at creating a binary world of those who can prove their COVID-19 risk status and those who cannot.

The requirement for a digital identity

Oh, and there’s another issue that Atick didn’t address, but which bears noting.

All of the solutions listed above assume as a given that people will be the owners of a unique, government-authorized digital identity.

As I’ve noted elsewhere, there are people who are fervently opposed to this.

In my country, both some people on the left and some people on the right believe that “governmental digital identity” naturally equates to “governmental digital surveillance,” and that governments shouldn’t be abusing the data that they can obtain from all the vaccinations you get, all the places you travel, all the things you buy, and all the other things that you do.

(Well, except for voting. Some on the right fervently believe that government identities are essential to voting, even if they’re not essential to any other activity.)

But are people truly banned from travel?

So where does this leave the people who cannot prove that they were vaccinated with an authorized vaccine, or perhaps were never vaccinated at all?

In many cases travel for the unvaccinated is not banned, but they have to go through additional hoops to travel. Using one example, unvaccinated U.S. citizens can travel to Austria if they “have recovered from COVID-19 in the past 180 days; or present a negative COVID-19 PCR or antigen test result procured within 72 or 48 hours of travel.” For more country-by-country specifics as of August 13, click here.

But how will the unvaccinated get to Europe, or anywhere else?

• Some cruise lines won’t take them, or will impose heavy restrictions on the unvaccinated.
• Canada is working on regulations that may (or may not) ban the unvaccinated from airline travel.
• Germany isn’t banning unvaccinated U.S. travelers (right now), but is requiring quarantine.
• United Airlines isn’t requiring passengers to be vaccinated. Employees? That’s another matter.

But on the other hand, a vaccination in and of itself is not a guarantee that you can travel. Norway has a long list of requirements that an incoming person must satisfy, vaccination or not. This isn’t the time for an American to go on a sightseeing tour to Oslo.

Or Pyongyang.

So a binary division into the “travels” and “travel nots” may not become a reality. Instead, it will be a gradation of travel allowances and non-allowances, based upon a variety of factors.

Well, that was unexpected, at least by me.

I figured that discussion of the European Union Digital COVID Certificate (EUDCC) would focus on use of the certificate by residents of the EU.

However, the big debate right now is about how citizens of countries outside of the EU are affected. While the EUDCC is primarily designed for EU citizens, the EU has an interest in getting people from outside of the EU to travel to Europe and spend lots of euros and make everyone happy.

However, some of the regulations that govern the EUDCC and the EU’s COVID response are actually hampering travel from outsiders.

And when words like “equitable” are being bandied about, people are going to take notice.

Let’s start by examining the list of vaccines that are approved in the European Union.

Four vaccines are currently approved for use in the EU: Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna, AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson. Another four are under “rolling review” for possible approval: Russia’s Sputnik, China’s Sinovac, Germany’s CureVac and Novavax of the United States.

So if you received one of the first four vaccines, this can be listed on your EUDCC and you can go about your merry way.

But African governmental entities believe that a fifth vaccine, one that happens to be available in Africa, should be added to the list.

[W]hile the goal is for EU Member States to issue vaccination certificates regardless of the COVID-19 vaccine type used, the granting of a “green pass” applies, only to vaccines that have received EU-wide marketing authorisation. Thus, while the AstraZeneca vaccine (ChAdOx1_nCoV-19) produced and authorized in Europe (Vaxzervria) is included, the same formation of the vaccine (Covishield) produced under license by the Serum Institute of India (SII), is excluded.

The TL;DR version: since Covishield is equivalent to Vaxzervria/AstraZeneca, people who received Covishield should get EU travel privileges.

Why does the same vaccine formulation have two different names? Because a special effort was mounted to provide vaccines to the Third World without endangering First World profits.

Covishield is the Indian counterpart of AstraZeneca-Oxford developed Vaxzervria and is identical to the one made in Europe. It has been widely distributed in many low and middle-income countries through the EU-supported COVAX programme. However the vaccine has not been included on the EUDCC because it is not approved by the European Medicines Agency (EMA). 

The European Medicines Agency counters that Covishield is NOT the same as the European version of AstraZeneca, despite an identical formulation:

“Even though it may use an analogous production technology to Vaxzevria (AstraZeneca’s vaccine), Covishield as such is not currently approved under EU rules,” the European Medicines Agency (EMA) said in a statement to AFP. “This is because vaccines are biological products. Even tiny differences in the manufacturing conditions can result in differences in the final product, and EU law therefore requires the manufacturing sites and production process to be assessed and approved as part of the authorisation process.”

So that’s where things stand as of now. And they may remain this way unless there’s pressure on the EMA to revise its decision.

Now I’m wondering how many Nigerians…and how many Indians…and how many Chinese and Russians (remember that Sputnik and Sinovac aren’t approved either)…are choosing to forgo a European holiday this summer.

So for the last few months we’ve been saying “we need travelers.” And now that we’re about to get travelers, people are getting worried.

The European Union’s system of digital COVID-19 travel certificates is due to come into force on Thursday, but airports group ACI and airlines representative bodies A4E, IATA and ERA warned in a letter to EU national leaders of a “worrying patchwork of approaches” across the continent.

Of course, we’ve known for some time that the EU Digital COVID Certificates are being implemented on a national basis. But now the airport and airline industries are warning that checking the certificates can be dizzying.

So there will be some confusion on Thursday. But will the confusion outweigh the benefits of increased travel?

First, a correction.

When I first began writing about the Digital Green Certificate, I referred to it as…the Digital Green Certificate, noting the confusion that the name could cause with climate activists and the like.

Well, it turns out that climate activists have no cause for confusion, because the name of the certificate is NOT the “Digital Green Certificate.”

It’s the “EU Digital COVID Certificate,” as noted here.

With that out of the way, let’s revisit developments since the first seven countries began issuing the EUDCC on June 1.

By Tuesday, June 15, the list of issuing countries will expand to 14:

Italy is one of the first EU countries to begin issuing the EU Digital COVID Certificate, alongside Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Germany, Greece, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Poland, and Spain.

The remainder of the countries should be issuing the EUDCC by July 1.