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Danes are hoping the country's relatively successful vaccine effort will lead to a normal summer. /AP/Finn Frandsen, Polfoto
Denmark is to launch a COVID-19 passport by the end of February to ease travel and mitigate the spread of a second wave of the pandemic.
It is being developed by the country's business and culture departments and is to be launched in a simple form by the end of the month. A digital passport is also being developed but could take up to three months to be released.
"It is absolutely crucial for us to be able to restart Danish society so that companies can get back on track," said Denmark's acting Minister of Finance Morten Bodskov.
It is currently unclear how the passport would work, although Bodskov noted that they could be presented on a user's mobile phone.
Vaccine passports, which have been expected since the early months of the pandemic, are beginning to be realized. Several other European Union countries are going ahead with plans to implement them, while other member states are opening unrestricted access to their borders for those holding a vaccine certificate.
In December 2020, Cyprus became the first EU member state to announce the abolishing, from March 2021, of entry requirements to travelers who can prove they are protected against COVID-19. Romania, Greece and Iceland have announced similar plans.
In January, after lobbying from member states, the European Commission announced it was developing vaccine certificates, stressing the need for "a common EU approach to trusted, reliable and verifiable certificates would allow people to use their records in other member states."
It remains unclear how EU citizens' personal and medical data will be protected and which entity will hold the information.
The private sector is also developing vaccine passports. Many large tech companies have supported CommonPass, through which upload their vaccination records or test results into an app, which generates a unique QR code. This can then be shown to border authorities without revealing identifying information.
