Govt launches online Covid-19 travel system
The Ministry of Health has introduced a system to digitally verify Covid-19 certificates for travellers in all ports of entries effective July 1 2021.
A statement issued on Monday evening, signed by Ministry of Health Principal Secretary Charles Mwansambo, states that in collaboration with the African Union and Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) with support from PanaBIOS Consortium, government is implementing an online system to authenticate and verify travellers’ Covid 19 certificates in line with the Trusted Travel (TT) framework.
He said the online verification system will ensure the integrity of certificates presented at various points of entry.
Reads the statement: “The Covid-19 pandemic continues to adversely impact global travel, disrupting trade, tourism and other economic activities. To mitigate against these effects and to allow for economic activities dependent on international travel, many governments are requiring travellers to present Covid-19 negative certificates at various points of entry.”
According to the statement, starting from July 1 2021 no traveller will be allowed to leave Malawi without verified certificates and those coming to Malawi will also be required to produce a Travel Code (TC) issued after successful validation of their test result by the Global Haven verifier.
Mwansambo said laboratories authorised to carry out the RC PCR tests are Queen Elizabeth in Blantyre, Kamuzu in Lilongwe, Zomba and Mzuzu central hospitals, as well as National Microbiology Reference Laboratory, after which travellers will be issued with TT codes that can be verified by airlines and port health authorities.
Reads the statement further: “Travellers who test at authorised laboratories will receive a text [SMS] and/or email message from either or both the testing laboratory and admin@panabios with additional information on how to generate a TC coded at trustedtravel.panabios.org.
“If the test result meets the exit and entry requirements of Malawi and those of the traveller’s destination, the system will instantly issue the TC online. No traveller will depart from Malawi without verification of their certificates and the TT process.”
The Presidential Task Force on Covid-19 recently announced travel restrictions. The digital verification system also comes in the wake of reports of fake traveller’s Covid-19 certificates.
