New Covid test certification system on offer to travellers from the UK
The new Digital Travel Certification for Lateral Flow Self-Tests from Certific allows holidaymakers and travellers leaving the UK to carry out verifiable rapid antigen (lateral flow) tests at home, and receive a test certificate and QR code on their phone before travel
Certific offers testing services in partnership with Dr Jack Kreindler Consulting Ltd. Dr Jack Kreindler, an Honorary Research Fellow at Imperial College London in computational modelling for public health and Covid, is the Medical Director and co-founder of Certific. He explained why the service is necessary: “The UK NHS free lateral flow home tests programme is generous but can’t be professionally certified in an affordable way, may not continue indefinitely, and can’t be used for pre-travel testing.”
Covid test certification process
The process is as follows:
- Once a user has obtained a qualifying lateral flow home test kit from a U.K. approved manufacturer, they download the Certific app, which can be used on most modern Android and iPhones and is also available for desktop applications.
- To verify their identity, users need to upload a photo of themselves to the app, along with their date of birth, home address, passport details, and report on their vaccination status.
- Then, following a step-by-step guide from the app, users take the test while the app records them. The video of the test, along with the result is verified by Certific’s medically supervised test control officers.
- If the test result is negative, a certificate valid for travel and QR code is created in the app and also sent to the user’s email within four hours.
- Those who see and report an apparent positive result are given the recommended advice at the moment the test is complete, followed by an official report and support from a dedicated patient team led by experienced doctors. All results are automatically reported to Public Health England.
The UK Government recently said that 82 providers of Covid PCR tests are to be issued warnings over misleading prices, and has confirmed that its own website will be updated to reflect the true costs of Covid tests for travel purposes.