COVID-19 vaccine: Greece issues digital vaccine certificates

A few months before the tourist season kicks off, Greece has become one of the first European Union countries to issue digital COVID-19 vaccination certificates.

The aim is to facilitate travel, hoping that a large part of the world's population will have been vaccinated by the summer.

Kyriakos Pierrakakis, Minister of Digital Governance, says he believes that it will be adopted as a certificate at a pan-European level.

"The Greek prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, has already filed our proposal at a European level, which is, for the work to be used as a tool to facilitate, obviously not as a tool to discriminate."

"The proposal focuses on border crossings," he outlined. "We propose that when you cross the border to go to another country, to have of course the possibility to have a test and to be quarantined, but also, if you have been vaccinated, to have the chance to cross the border easily. A kind of fast lane inside the airports, if one has been vaccinated, to have the opportunity to go to a different lane from those who haven't been vaccinated.''

The country's rollout got started last season, starting with frontline health

care staff and citizens of nursing homes.

The certificate will only be available to the who have received both doses of the vaccine. So far, that's 2.2% of the population.

They are able to download documentation via the council website. The system went live on Friday morning, and by Monday, 55,000 certificates had been issued.

For the time being, it will be used as a healing record, but it is hoping it will soon be used for international travel.

''Especially as far border mixtures are worried, we are very optimistic that this proposition will be raised because if it doesn't, we will face the absurd version, where someone that is maintained, still needs to get tested or quarantined - when these devices can be used fresh for other citizens, '' added Pierrakakis.

Greece's know-how in link to these documents has stimulated other member countries' industry, especially about how mutual agreements could work in the near future.