“The U.S. and global economies simply cannot afford to wait for a widely-distributed COVID vaccine for international travel to resume, so innovative technologies and the embrace of best health practices need to provide the way forward,” said U.S. Travel Association President and CEO Roger Dow.
Dow issued this statement on the arrival in the U.S. of the first international flight utilizing the CommonPass digital health system to rapidly verify passengers’ COVID-19 status:
“A rapid and secure means of verifying travelers’ COVID status is an important component of that, so we’re excited about the advancement of CommonPass,” Dow said.
CommonPass is an initiative which aims to develop a global interoperable framework to safely restore cross-border travel to pre-pandemic levels. As countries around the world work to overcome the COVID-19 pandemic and restart their economies and tourism, they all face the challenge of how to reopen their borders and allow international travel to resume while protecting their populations’ health. The current patchwork of policies and ever-changing border entry and health screening requirements has made international travel incredibly complex, leaving airlines and border agencies uncertain about the validity of test results and passengers unsure of what is being asked of them.
What CommonPass aims to develop and launch is a standard global model to enable people to securely document and present their COVID-19 status (either as test results or an eventual vaccination status) to facilitate international travel and border crossing while keeping their health information private. Recognizing that countries will make sovereign decisions on border entry and health screening requirements, including whether or not to require tests or what type of test to require, CommonPass serves as a neutral platform which creates the interoperability needed for the various ‘travel bubbles’ to connect and for countries to trust one another’s data by leveraging global standards.
“Developing processes to quickly approve and implement these kinds of beneficial technologies will be particularly vital, so we are grateful to the CDC and Customs and Border Protection for observing these trials,” the U.S. Travel Association CEO stated.
“System-wide flexibility to safely improve the overall travel process can help navigate out of the crippling economic fallout of COVID-related travel restrictions and quarantine requirements, and can hopefully pay further dividends for more seamless and convenient travel even once the pandemic has subsided.”
