How can blockchain help us deal with the COVID-19 pandemic?

One of the post-peak challenges, we will face with COVID-19 is to determine who is immune and who is not. Assuming that people can get immunity (and there are reasons to believe that this may not be the case), there needs to be a way to determine who is capable of being in "high contact" area.

In other words, how do we verify that you have the COVID-19 anti-bodies that would enable you to work at a restaurant, grocery store or drive a bus?

Now the infrastructure to deliver this type of testing is still not there. For example, in "Laredo, officials discovered the tests they received were woefully inadequate. The local health department found them to have a reliability of about 20 percent."

Assuming we can get a test that works, then we would need a way to certify that the person has achieved the desired immunity.

Think about how this process could work manually:

1. The walk-in or doctor/lab will process the test.
2. The person waits for the test results.
3. They will then need to produce the results to the government.
4. The government will need to issue some type of official certification. 

There could be an incentive to fake the certification. Well, let's rephrase. That there will be an incentive to doctor these things. Not just to get a job. But also to defy quarantine orders using fake certificates. Consider the people protesting the quarantine that blocked healthcare workers in Michigan:

And so that's where blockchain comes in.

To be a bit more specific, this is the permissioned blockchain (unlike bitcoin which is a public blockchain) that is implemented between trusted parties. As noted in the process described above, there are many parties involved - the doctor, the clinic and the government - all these parties would need to be on-boarded through a KYC process that would give each participant a private key that enables them to "sign" the "digital paperwork" at each phase of the process.

This would then allow "digital immunity certificates" to be issued instantaneously. No need to wait for test results. No need to get an official document from the government.

As it turns out, Vottun is working on some type of "Immunity Passport" that "can be verified at any time using cryptography by any mobile phone that can read a QR code". The company is working in Spain and is in discussion with Dr. Fauci of the CDC.

There are a lot of assumptions on how this could work. But it could be the killer app that helps saves lives.

Author: Malik Datardina, CPA, CA, CISA. Malik works at Auvenir as a GRC Strategist that is working to transform the engagement experience for accounting firms and their clients. The opinions expressed here do not necessarily represent UWCISA, UW, Auvenir (or its affiliates), CPA Canada or anyone else