COPENHAGEN: Denmark's government is joining forces with businesses to develop a digital passport that would show whether people have been vaccinated against the coronavirus, allowing them to travel and help ease restrictions on public life.
Finance Minister Morten Boedskov told a news conference on Wednesday that "in three, four months, a digital corona passport will be ready for use in, for example, business travel." "It is absolutely crucial for us to be able to restart Danish society so that companies can get back on track.
Many Danish companies are global companies with the whole world as a market," he added.
As a first step, before the end of February, citizens in Denmark would be able to see on a Danish health web site the official confirmation of whether they have been vaccinated.
"It will be the extra passport that you will be able to have on your mobile phone that documents that you have been vaccinated," Boedskov said.
"We can be among the first in the world to have it and can show it to the rest of the world." The presentation was made together with representatives of the main business organisations, the Confederation of Danish Industries, which represents Denmark's major companies, and the Danish Chamber of Commerce.
The European Commission, meanwhile, has been weighing proposals to issue vaccination certificates to help get travellers to their vacation destinations more quickly and avoid another disastrous summer for Europe's tourism sector.
But the EU's executive arm said for now such certificates would only be used for medical purposes, for instance to monitor the possible adverse effects of vaccines.
Some similar digital passports are being developed to help travellers to securely show they've complied with COVID-19 testing requirements.
One, called CommonPass, says it could also track vaccinations.