Digital COVID Pass: Automated COVID Report Verification

The worsening situation of the pandemic has forced authorities to impose restrictions on several sectors to control the spread of the virus; the travel industry is also among the restricted areas. Different regions of the world have banned travelling for leisure purposes and the United Kingdom is one of them. For customer onboarding, airports require negative Covid-19 reports and these reports are also verified to ensure that people are not using forged reports for fooling the checks. However, the procedures are manual as of today. From January 2021, the report verification measures came into action but manual verification requires at least an hour as per the BBC reports. 

Not just airports but other public facilities like restaurants, educational institutes, arenas, conferences, and large-scale events have to follow the new COVID report verification rule as well. Given the rise in digitisation during the pandemic, manual testing and verification of the reports is an inadequate option. What can be done then? Shufti has come up with an efficient solution to streamline the COVID test verification and passenger onboarding process. Keep reading to learn how. 

How Does Covid Report Verification Work?

Resources have revealed that airports require Covid test reports of onboarding customers. Apart from airports, other public facilities like arenas and restaurants have been guided to perform COVID report verification. The customer/passenger can either ask the airport health facility to perform the test or get a report from government-authorized laboratories. However, reports from any lab are not acceptable and the pre-defined test threshold must be met. Ultimately, this leads to verification of the reports from local labs. This doesn’t mean that the laboratories are inefficient but there is a high probability that fraudsters will use forged reports for dodging authorities. 

Using a genuine report and changing a few details like name and date of the test is not a big deal. Furthermore, it is not at all a problem for imposters to design a high-quality report for the purpose. Hence, verification of the reports is crucial at the public facilities. To ensure that all legitimate report holders are being onboarded, experts check the barcode and ensure that the report is not forged. 

Cons of Manual Report Verification

Here are some of the consequences that airports are currently experiencing due to the manual procedure:

The spread of the Virus

First and foremost, manual verification means you have to make physical contact with documents. Ultimately, controlling the spread of coronavirus is a big problem. No matter how hard one tries to maintain distance or use sanitisers, there is always a chance of interacting with the virus somehow. So, why take the risk?

Time Consumption

It takes a lot of time to verify the code on every report. The codes vary from lab to lab; some labs use QR codes while some prefer MRZ codes. To decipher these codes, extra effort is required and manually performing the task means a lot of time. Customers have to wait for at least an hour to get the report verified. Think about tons of end-users every hour, every day, and some delayed processes can lead to increased drop-off rate. It is nearly impossible to cater to every customer in a limited time. 

Extra Effort 

Employees have to invest a lot of effort in extracting data from the document and then converting it into machine-readable language. Then, there is a lot of effort needed for verifying the authenticity of the document and the information mentioned in it. 

Cost of verification 

Next is the extra cost that the different sectors is incurring for performing these verifications. The industries are already suffering from the darkest time and extra cost for ensuring security as well as safety is not a viable option. 

Fortunately, we have a solution that can help all these facilities in verifying not just identities but also the Covid reports along with combating the aforementioned challenges. 

Digital COVID Pass – Automated Report Verification with Shufti

While working on enhancing our AI-powered products, we came across a solution that can help in verifying not only identities but also the Covid reports. Our identity verification service can help all the authorities in ensuring that they haven’t onboarded any fraudster and nobody has shown false reports for onboarding as well. 

Digital COVID Pass – The Process

If you get our IDV service, the API with this report verification feature is installed in your system. Here’s how the process of our IDV service goes:

Document Verification

For identity verification, first, the user has to register on the merchant’s portal and the required information is shared with us. Then, we verify the government-issued ID documents of the user for authenticity. With the help of thousands of AI models, the document (in this case passport) is verified by authenticating the holograms, rainbow prints, etc.   

Facial Biometric Authentication

Next is the facial biometric authentication step. Live presence of the customer is ensured and a selfie is obtained to verify the picture on the government-issued ID documents. This also helps in identifying any spoof attacks and prevent fraudsters from making any trouble. 

Covid-19 Test Report Verification 

This is the interesting step in which the Covid test report is verified. According to the government guidelines, the report must not be older than the pre-defined threshold and from the laboratories listed by the government. First, our AI-based OCR will extract the code embedded in the report. This could be a QR code. 

Details like the name of the person and date of the test are hidden within the code, so it is impossible to fool the AI-powered checks. In case a Covid positive person has submitted a forged report, the information in the code can be deciphered and public facilities can avoid customer onboarding. The best part is, all these checks require only a minute or so for completion. Moreover, there is no need for human effort to verify one report. 

Who Needs Digital COVID Pass?

Not just the airports, but many other sectors have been guided to perform COVID report verification. Arenas, cinemas, large-scale events like the Olympics, cruise, conferences, restaurants, and other public places have to verify the Covid test results before allowing any person to enter the facility. 

SOPs and Enhanced ID Verification in Seconds 

The staff of public facilities have to maintain social distance and safeguard themself from the spread of the virus as well. Touchless identity verification kiosks are one of the inevitable options that can help the companies in complying with the ID verification regulations and follow the SOPs at the same time. 

The touchless identity verification kiosks are installed at security checkpoints and all the customers have to register remotely for the verification. The details provided during registration are generally used for identity verification. 

Upon reaching the facility, the government-issued ID document is verified. 

Then, biometric authentication checks are performed in which face recognition, palm recognition, and voice recognition is done. 

The API for COVID report verification will be installed in the kiosk and the customer has to show the report for verification. OCR extracts data in the QR code and within seconds, the authority will be notified if the person must be onboarded or not. 

Conclusion

To sum up, making public facilities and customers safe from the novel coronavirus is what we need now. The Covid positive cases are rapidly increasing and many sectors have been highlighted as a red zone these days. The travel and education sector and restaurants are guided to perform Covid report verification of all the customers. Travelling for recreational purposes is strictly forbidden and people with legal permits can travel. All travellers have been guided to submit a Covid negative report. Likewise, other public facilities have to ensure that COVID positive customers stay away from the place. With the help of Shufti’s Digital COVID Pass, it will be easier for all the public facilities to comply with the new rules and ensure security. 

You can find out more about our IDV and report verification service from our experts.