BASSETERRE, St. Kitts - WITH the COVID-19 Vaccines slowly being rolled out across the world and there being talk about a vaccine passport, Antigua’s Minister of Information Melford Nicholas said his territory would work to ensure all vaccination information is easily accessible by the relevant authorities who require same.
Acknowledging that there is misinformation surrounding whether that requires people to get a new passport, the Minister assured that it is not the case, instead it would be a document that indicates one would have been vaccinated.
During his post Cabinet media briefing, Nicholas conceded that Antigua found a number of people who returned home last year during the height of the pandemic provided fraudulent negative COVID-19 tests documents.
He indicated that because many of the documents were paper-based, it was opened to fraudulent manipulation.
And with many countries expected in the near future to ask for proof of inoculation as a prerequisite for entry, the Ministry emphasised that some countries might not recognise the authenticity of those documents.
It is against that backdrop that it was announced that the Government of Antigua and Barbuda is currently registering persons to its digital portal, which can be accessed by all the airlines and IATA.
“That portal will be digitized, but the digitize register can be made available through the airline and through IATA, such that when they leave here they will have their own cards and own barcode card to be able to take with them,” disclosed Nicholas.
He noted that those ports of entry that required government proof of inoculation would be able to “through investigation of the digital registry be able to make a comparison and validation of what is being transported in paper form”.
Reiterating that the information would be easily accessible, the Minister reminded that once IATA has access to the information it would be able to transport that to any country people hope to visit.
