Thousands of summer holidays are now up in the air, following a series of Covid-19 flare-ups around the world, with trips cancelled and travellers forced to quarantine when they return home.<\/p>\n
In mid-July, the number of confirmed cases globally jumped by a million in just four days.<\/p>\n
The UK imposed a 14-day isolation on holidaymakers returning from Spain after infection rates spiked there, prompting the UK\u2019s biggest tour operator to cancel all holidays to that country.<\/p>\n
After recording its first cases since April, Viet Nam closed the tourist hotspot of Da Nang to tourists and evacuated 80,000 tourists from the city.<\/p>\n
Now, a new health passport app promises to restore confidence to the travel industry, which has been badly hit by the pandemic.<\/p>\n
Global tourism shrank by 97% in April, according to the United Nations World Tourism Organisation.<\/p>\n
A possible solution<\/strong><\/p>\n CovidPass is the brainchild of one of the World Economic Forum\u2019s Young Global Leaders (YGLs), Mustapha Mokass.\u00a0 It also involves other YGLs across 5 continents, including Muna AbuSulayman and Peggy Liu.<\/p>\n CovidPass uses blockchain technology to store encrypted data from individual blood tests, allowing users to prove that they have tested negative for Covid-19.<\/p>\n Unlike contact tracing apps, CovidPass will not track users\u2019 movements. Non-mandatory contact tracing apps have met with only limited success so far due to privacy concerns.<\/p>\n Germany, regarded as one of the most successful nations in rolling out a voluntary app, currently has only 16 million users out of 83 million citizens. Experts say at least half the population needs to use a contact tracing app to make it effective in fighting the virus.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, governments are faced with a variety of different testing regimes to validate the health of travellers. \u201cThis isn\u2019t enough to reassure tourists or health authorities”, says Mokass.<\/p>\n Mokass hopes his app, which is launching in September, will become a standardised solution for airlines, airports and border agencies, and eliminate quarantine for healthy travellers.<\/p>\n CovidPass could also allow hotels, cinemas, theatres, sporting and concert venues to reopen safely.<\/p>\n Another possible use would be to help restart the worldwide conference and exhibition industry, which has contracted by 60%, at a cost of $180 billion in lost revenues and impacting 1.9 million jobs, according to the industry\u2019s global association, UFI.<\/p>\n CovidPass commits to mandatory carbon offsetting for each flight passenger, to preserve the environmental benefits of reduced air travel during the crisis.<\/p>\n By Douglas Broom<\/em><\/p>\n This article first appeared on the World Economic Forum’s website. You can read it here<\/a><\/strong>.<\/em><\/p>\n
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