June 7, 2021
BY MOHAMED M. SESAY
The Chief Operating Officer at the Directorate of Science Technology and Innovation (DSTI) Michala Mackay has yesterday informed a galaxy of journalists that the DSTI will be launching the Electronic -Certificate which will now ensure that inbound and outbound passengers will now be able to access the certificate electronically on the same travel portal that they have registered with.
She made this disclosure in the Ministry of Information and Communications Press Conference, noting that the E-Certificate has the Quick Response (QR) code. She said the code will have all the personal date submitted by the passenger during the registration via the portal. The registration will include the full name, the unique identifier followed by five digits number of the passenger
She said whether passengers have their tests done at any of the six locations or at government hospitals in the Districts, or whether they have what they called the premium Service and once they are fine with their data collected, they will now use the USSD *1919#. She added that the information will indicate the time the swab was collected and it is fed directly into the system and once the result is released by the lab, it will show on the certificate that this is the date the swab was collected.
She said the E-Certificate will also now ensure that passengers no longer have to go to the Emergency Operation Center in order to collect their certificate but rather go directly to the travel portal and they will be able to download the electronic certificate on their phones.
She indicated that what they have done based on international demands is to update and upgrade the website as and when required so that passengers coming from high risk countries could be easily tracked for further advice.
She said the printing of the certificate particularly for outbound passengers has been done manually which results to uncontrolled crowding at the Emergency Operation Center. She added that they have been working with fixed solution to manage the travel portal to see how they could improve on the certificate aspect and also the result of the covid-19 test whether it is for inbound or outbound passengers
“If you feel you want to have it printed it is based on individual volition but printed copies will never be received from the Emergency Operation Center. The QR code will enable verification to be done from any jurisdiction which means, anywhere a passengers goes in the world, the simple scan of that code will be able to tell who you are, what your details are, the lab from which your test was conducted and also the contact details of the lab in case they want to do random verification”, she concluded.