On March 31, the World Health Organization (WHO) published a guide on the documentation required to implement digital certificates of COVID-19 test results.
The guide on the implementation of digital documentation for COVID-19 tests or examinations is the second guide published by the WHO on these topics. The organization previously published a similar document referring to the status of vaccination and digital certification.
The new guide is intended to be a supporting document for countries in their efforts to develop or adopt a digital system for the verification of COVID-19 tests. In this way, the guide contains technical specifications and information on the interoperability standards that must be present in a system of this type.
The digital certificate can be used to confirm that international travelers have a negative result on their most recent COVID-19 test.
This document is the result of the working groups that the WHO implemented at the end of 2020 when the vaccination processes began. The Digital Documentation of COVID-19 Certificates (DDCC) strategy emerged from these meetings.
In this case, the WHO classifies COVID-19 test systems as DDCC:TR (test result). That is, a certificate that confirms the fact that an individual has been tested for COVID-19 and also shows its result.
This document can be completely digital and stored directly on a mobile phone or on a cloud server. The DDCC:TR has digital security specifications, for example, a professional signature, a QR code, a PDF document with a barcode, among others.
Likewise, the WHO shows in the guide the ethical considerations for the implementation of this digital solution. For example, the results are only documented for individual health purposes, such as diagnosis, for use in public health tasks or epidemiological surveillance.
You can download the complete guide at the following link:
Likewise, the guide on DDCC:VS (vaccination status) is available at the following link: https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/WHO-2019-nCoV-Digital_certificates-vaccination-2021.1
