Could immunity passports be blockchain mainstream?

Threats of COVID-19 are relentlessly expanding across the world signaling a deep global recession. In their response to the pandemic, governments and cities worldwide are exploring ways to get back on track and restart economic activities. In this way, many countries like Italy, Germany, and the United States, among others are now leveraging immunity passports, a form of documentation given to those who have recovered from coronavirus.

The immunity passports are touted as an effective tool to conquer the future impact of COVID-19 and prevent the spread of the virus. This form of documentation will validate that someone is immune to the virus, by performing an antibody test and a virus test. This means that immunity passports would rely on antibody tests that will require an individual’s identity – a sensitive and personal health data.

However, as any trace and track initiative involves an individual’s data, it represents data privacy, with numerous concerns about how the data will be stored, who will have access to the data, and who will be accountable once it tampered. Some experts believe that blockchain has the potential to ease fears around privacy over the COVID-19 tracing app like an immunity passport.

Already, blockchain has proved to be an effective technology, and countries including Estonia, Germany and Switzerland have opted for a decentralized approach, which does not record location data and alerts users about potential contact with COVID-19 automatically, without involving the authorities.

According to René Seifert, co-head at TrueProfile.io, a blockchain-enabled digital immunity passport could be viable if end-users provide proof of ID before testing and a permanent ‘digital fingerprint’ of the certificate is placed on the blockchain, which is used by a verifier, such as an employer, to check authenticity.

Meanwhile, as countries using immunity passports confident that the certificates will inspire diagnosed individuals to report results to the health ministry, the WHO raises questions about the authenticity of results from some of the tests on the market, which it says are not adequately sensitive or accurate. The agency also concerned that false positives could lead people to think that they are safe from future infection, regardless of never having had the disease. This would also mean infected people might fail to self-isolate. The WHO’s advice is that immunity certificates may in fact risk continued transmission of the virus, and lead to people ignoring public health advice.

“For a blockchain-enabled immunity passport to truly work effectively and be taken seriously, it is crucial that Covid-19 tests not only have high levels of sensitivity and specificity, but any antibody test is proven to show that end-users cannot get infected again. However, this should not mean that governments and healthcare bodies abandon the development of blockchain-enabled immunity passports altogether, as the time may come when this sort of technology could be highly effective and help keep citizen health data secure and decentralised.” René said.

Currently, an individual can get an immunity pass if his/her antibody test is positive and a negative virus test.