From Corona Test to Digital EU Test Certificate with Cotema innFactory
For a year and a half, the Corona virus has dominated the world. Since spring 2021, there has been reason to breathe a sigh of relief, as infection rates have been steadily falling. This is essentially due to the testing and vaccination strategy. To maintain this through summer and fall, the so-called three pandemic G’s apply to many activities (travel, concerts, sports, etc.): Vaccinated, tested, or recovered. For example, only those people who fulfill one of these three G’s have access to certain activities. Due to the dynamic infection situation, there has also been a testing requirement for returning travelers since August 1st. As proof of fulfilling one of the three G’s, the so-called Green Pass (Digital Green Certificate = DGC) has been available since July 1st. For the Green Pass, recovery is recognized just as well as vaccination or a test, provided that an infection was not more than six months ago. The EU’s digital Green Pass thus forms the legal framework for member states’ solutions to facilitate freedom of travel again, for example. The certificate is issued digitally for the Corona-Warn-App (CWA) and/or in paper format and is valid in all EU states. The certificate can be checked for validity using the CovPassCheck app.
The EU test certificate contains necessary central information such as name, date of birth and issue, as well as information about the type of test. This data remains part of the certificate and is not stored or retained when a certificate is verified in another member state. The certificate can be issued by health authorities, testing centers, or directly via health platforms like Cotema. The certificate contains only a limited amount of necessary data. This data may not be stored by the authorities of the visited countries. For authentication purposes, only the validity of the certificate is checked by verifying who issued and signed it. All health-related data remains with the member state that issued the EU digital COVID certificate.
The goal of the test certificate is to exempt persons with a negative result from quarantine or other infection control regulations. The uniform validity period within the EU is 72 hours for PCR tests and 48 hours for antigen rapid tests.
In addition to several other features that have been implemented in Cotema since December 2020 and January 2021 and are being used productively in vaccination and testing centers, the creation of test certificates with Cotema is now possible after an acceptance test and approval for the Digital-COVID-Certificate-Server.
The process in detail:
Upon successful appointment booking in Cotema or spontaneous registration via the rapid test profile function at the testing center, a swab is taken from the person to be tested and a QR code is generated in Cotema. This QR code is attached to the test and the test person can leave the testing center. After about 20 minutes, an employee scans the QR code on the test and enters the test result in Cotema: positive, negative, invalid. The tested person now receives an encrypted email with the test result. To open the encrypted email, first name, last name, and date of birth must be provided. The tested person receives the test certificate in A4 format or directly for the CWA if they agreed to the terms and conditions at the beginning. In the CWA, the test person can request an EU certificate, which can also be read by the CovPass app. This certificate is valid throughout the EU.
For more information about our software for Corona testing centers, please use the contact form below or contact Maximilian Grassl directly by phone. Cotema is a plug-and-play solution that can be cancelled monthly. Individual requests can be implemented by us for a standard daily rate.
