Catalonia completes the Covid Certificate for travel within the EU

BarcelonaCatalonia already has its Covid Certificate to facilitate travel within the European Union. Since Tuesday afternoon it is possible to download the digital document on the website of La Meva Salut. The certificate certifies whether the person has been vaccinated against covid, if a test has been performed with a negative result or if enough time has passed since the diagnosis to consider that they have recovered from the infection.

At the moment, the Catalan population can only download two of the options that, according to the European health authorities, have to make travel between countries safer: if the person has received the two doses of the vaccine and at least 14 days have passed since the completion of the guideline (the certificate of vaccination) or if the person has had covid (the certificate of recovery), which indicates that they have passed the infection in the last six months and the last negative PCR is at least of the previous 11 days. The certificate certifying that the diagnostic test, either a PCR or an antigen test, is negative will be available soon, government sources say.

The EU Covid Certificate will not be operational throughout the European Community until July 1, since the approval of its regulation in the Official Journal of the European Union (OJ) is pending, as well as the vote on how member states will apply it. However, the platform is already operational so that countries that want to move forward can implement the certificate before the official date.

Completely free of charge

"The Department of Health has carried out all the technical, logistical and operational work to issue this certificate even before it becomes compulsory in all the countries of the European Union", explained the Department that Josep Maria Argimon leads in a statement. In this sense, continues the note, the meetings between the Health Department technical managers with the Ministry of Health are constant to "know the news and the specificities of the project".

The deployment of this tool is currently in the testing phase: its capacity and success is being evaluated. Progressively, other functionalities will be added, but during the first days the certificate will be accessible in digital version and will be obtained through the website of La Meva Salut. In the coming weeks it will also be available in mobile applications and other formats. Catalonia joins the Valencian Country, Aragon, Navarra, Andalusia, Castilla-la Mancha and Extremadura, which launched their certificate on Monday, and countries such as Germany, Poland, Greece, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Croatia and Denmark.

The certificate, which will be completely free, will facilitate travel between Schengen countries and will include personal information related to the covid traveler. Without it you can travel to other countries, but as now it will be necessary to have one of the three documents. Even so, the Spanish government warns that travelers who have the EU Covid Certificate will pass the controls more quickly. "Without a digital certificate, entry into the countries will be slower. With the certificate, the entry will be more agile, and queues and additional controls will be avoided", the Secretary General of Digital Health of the Ministry of Health, Alfredo Gonzalez, summarised on Monday.