IDEMIA Partners With Orbis to Conduct COVID Immunity Border Screening

IDEMIA is partnering with Orbis Diagnostics to conduct immunity testing at its Canberra Innovation Lab. Orbis is based in New Zealand, and will be outfitting the IDEMIA lab with a rapid testing solution that can accurately determine an individual’s COVID-19 immunity status.

The two companies are hoping that Orbis’ immunity screening platform can be used to enable safe travels during the pandemic. The setup would make a COVID-19 test a standard part of the travel screening process, and would leverage IDEMIA’s existing passenger flow and digital identity capabilities to make that process as smooth as possible.

IDEMIA and Orbis will work with governments and border control authorities to bring health checks to New Zealand and Australia airports by the middle of 2021. They will then expand the program to cover other countries in the Asia Pacific region.

“Now that the world is deploying the first-generation of COVID-19 vaccines, we expect immunity screening to become a crucial element of the complete solution supporting the safe resumption of international travel,” said IDEMIA Oceania Managing Director Xavier Assouad. “We are exploring an integration of the Orbis solution with IDEMIA’s Mobile ID and border control platform for risk assessment purposes. This would reduce the probability of fraudulent immunity certification and enable trusted results to be shared with border agencies.”

Accurately testing whether a traveler is immune to COVID-19 will determine whether they are safe to enter their country of destination without quarantining, and without fear of infecting others or being infected themselves,” added Orbis CEO Brent Ogilvie. “This platform has been designed specifically for high-volume and non-laboratory environments, such as airports. The process is fast, and once a person’s immunity has been accurately determined, they could bypass quarantine with the assurance there is no substantial risk of causing a fresh outbreak.”

IDEMIA is a long-time partner of the Australian Department of Home Affairs, and currently provides biometric SmartGates for the country’s borders. Onfido and CLEAR are some of the other companies working to deliver immunity credentials.

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January 28, 2021 – by Eric Weiss