If you’re planning international travel in 2021, you may be curious about which of the vaccine passports in development and about to launch that you should get.
We’ve put together a list of the top contenders that will be available to Americans very soon.
IATA Travel Pass
The International Air Transport Association (IATA) developed Travel Pass, a digital passport that allows you to store and manage your COVID-19 test results or vaccine records. Doctors will send you your test results or vaccination certificate and you can then link those documents to the Travel Pass app prior to traveling. Just show the app to the agent at the airport along with your passport and ticket. Travel Pass does not store the data, so your personal information is protected. The Travel Pass app is slated to be available for iPhone and Android in mid-April.
CLEAR Health Pass
CLEAR’s Health Pass connects to over 30,000 labs, so you can easily integrate and link to your COVID-19 lab test result. And soon the app will allow you to securely link to your healthcare account to confirm your vaccine records too. CLEAR has partnered with Walmart to give travelers who have received a COVID vaccine at Walmart or Sam’s Club easy access to their vaccination records by linking them through the app.
CommonPass
CommonPass is a platform that gives you access to your COVID-realted documents and status, including PCR test results and vaccination status. It will show a simple yes or no answer as to whether a traveler meets the current entry criteria of the country they are traveling to. To ease privacy concerns, CommonPass allows travelers to consent to their lab results and vaccination records being used to validate their COVID status without revealing any other personal health information. CommonPass has also partnered with Walmart to give those travelers who have received a COVID vaccine at Walmart or Sam’s Club easy access to their vaccination records. CommonPass is currently being piloted in specific markets. You can sign up on their website via email to receive news of expansion.
VeriFLY
American Airlines now offers you free access to VeriFLY, a mobile health passport that can be used when traveling on an international flight to the U.S. and on domestic flights to eight countries, including the UK and Canada, as long as you are a ticketed passenger with them. Customers can upload any documents they need to meet travel requirements – like a negative COVID test – to VeriFLY and show them to an American agent at the airport.
Keep in mind that the European Union is also developing a vaccine passport for their citizens, and other individual countries also have vaccine passport plans in place (some, like Israel have already launched their own).
