As the world is struggling with the second wave of the deadly coronavirus the World Health Organization is adopting a blockchain-based solution to keep track of anti-COVID vaccination.
The global health regulator is signing a pact with Estonia, claiming to be the most digitised country in the European Union with its successful digital ID system, electronic voting, and documentation. The idea of the new venture is to create digital vaccination certificates proving international passengers have had a coronavirus shot. Such certificates are blockchain based and developed by the cybersecurity company Guardtime, founded in Estonia and headquartered in Switzerland.
The next step for the 12-week pilot project is to scale the solution by working together with other countries. The goal is to expand the scale to a global level and to include poorer countries.
According to the company’s executive, the solution has already been «tested by the U.S. government, telecoms companies and others in terms of onboarding a massive number of parties and the stability of the system.”
Another country that plans to track COVID-19 vaccinations using blockchain is Brazil. Currently residing on a 4th position in the global chart of coronavirus cases, with over 5 million cases and 150K deaths, Brazil is aiming at implementing anti-COVID immunisation at the beginning of 2021. To track those who has received vaccine shots, the Ministry of Health has partnered up with the Hyperledger Fabric blockchain network.
Using its facilities, the country’s government created a blockchain-based system called the National Health Data Network, or RNDS. The Ministry of Health’s coordinator of systems development, Elmo Raposo Oliveira noted: “So the Covid-19 vaccine will already be within our RNDS structure. So, when you get the vaccine you will already hit the RNDS here and we will already know who took it.»
The blockchain system keeps track of each injection, in addition to keeping other patients’ data such as symptoms description, medication or treatments.