In the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, stipulations and requirements are constantly changing and evolving to better ensure and work in accordance with safety protocols, especially when traveling abroad. In regards to these safety protocols, many countries have implemented new stipulations involving international travel. These enforcements require proof that the individual in question has been tested and confirmed to be negative for the virus before they are able to travel internationally.
Although these protocols have not been assimilated into every country, we can ascertain that with the rapid spread and evolving variants of the virus that this protocol will become deemed necessary in order for international travel to be plausible at all. It is only a matter of time before the increase of cases and casualties convinces more countries to consider these policies as a valid approach to combat the pandemic. These policies will be accepted to prevent further outbreak within their own jurisdictions, which will inevitably cause them to enforce these same requirements for those desiring to travel to their domain.
Although this new policy is more than necessary during this dire time, the potential of falsification of negative COVID-19 test results has posed a detrimental risk of inaccuracy, especially given the current methods in place to ensure validity of these tests. The current standards in place that are deemed an acceptable way to provide this documentation are primarily through E-mail, or as a printed document. Both of these avenues clearly have loopholes where falsification is concerned.
E-mails can easily be typed out to persuade the viewer that it is valid documentation of a negative testing result, while lacking any certainty that this individual was even tested to begin with. Printed documents pose much the same risk with allowing anyone the capacity to simply type out the desired statement and feign any necessary credentials to make it appear to be accurate. Both of these routes allow individuals to give the impression of having negative results, while not providing actual medical clarification that they are legitimate.
Anyone savvy with technology and knowledgeable of the specific templates that these documents usually are written in would have the capacity to replicate such with ease, and the recipient would be none the wiser. The sheer amount that these documents are already being scrutinized as a whole, whether fully accurate or falsified, would reveal a vague discrepancy at best when those falsifications do take place, and easily go unnoticed by those designated to verify their accuracy. It is clear what ramifications that this potentially poses worldwide.
Taking this into consideration, it is not a far stretch to presume that we must implement different methods in order to ensure accuracy with testing, which in return will ensure the safety of humanity as a whole. This notion is not to be taken lightly, and absolute clarity with verification is without parallel under these circumstances.
Fortunately enough in this day and age, we have technology available at our fingertips that can prevent the potential forgery of these documents, and provide a reliable database that can be referenced to, yet not manipulated by those who wish to alter it in their own favor. This type of trusted exchange of private, sensitive information between two parties would be most achievable by technologies that utilize public key infrastructures or PKI for short. PKI is a route to secure specific digital documents and offer a safe exchange of sensitive information.
This attribute regarding sensitive information is of utmost significance when considering anything of a medical nature, especially a document used as a reference for such. This means of exchange offers the recipient of the testing results validity with the digital documents provided to them. It simultaneously provides the individual tested with the privacy necessary when exchanging any document of a medical nature.
Overall, we have an immense need to update our means of exchanging and verifying testing results where international travel is concerned involving multiple jurisdictions and reporting standards. This is a necessity not just to minimize the detrimental effects that this pandemic has had on our world as a whole, but also to offer the clarity that preventing the transmission of the virus is of utmost importance.