WHO still pushing Global Vaccine Passports

Deutsche Telekom's subsidiary awarded the contract

Whilst many countries have been making noises about removing Covid passes, they still remain for a lot of international travel. It has been obvious from the beginning, with the amount of money and effort spent on them, that vaccine passes wouldn’t disappear without a fight.

Today, this concern has been reinforced with the World Health Organization (WHO) signing a contract with T-Systems (a Deutsche Telecom subsidiary) for the production of a global QR system to make digital vaccination certificates easier to introduce in the future. The press release in TotalTelecom says that the WHO is setting up a gateway to enable QR codes on electronic vaccination certificates to be checked across national borders.

The head of WHO’s Digital Health and Innovation Department, Garrett Mehl said that they would be “supporting member states in building national and regional trust networks and verification technology. The WHO’s gateway service also serves as a bridge between regional systems. It can also be used as part of future vaccination campaigns and home-based records”.

T-Systems have already developed the EU’s Digital Covid Certificates which are used by more than 60 countries already. They also developed the German tracing app which had event check-ins and universal certificate storage. With WHO membership comprising of 194 Member States, this Covid certification scheme looks to be massively expanded.

Furthermore, even if Covid won’t allow them to roll-out their certification scheme, the WHO already states that it wants the system to serve as a standard procedure for other vaccinations such as polio or yellow fever.

Now is not the time to let one’s guard down. Freedoms are being returned with one hand whilst being further curtailed with the other. Instead of celebrating the return of freedoms that should never have been removed in the first place, a continued effort should remain to ensure all restrictions are gone and can never be reinstated in the future. This new global vaccination passport should be the next thing to be scrapped, how every much money it wastes.