Apple will only accept apps about Covid-19 vaccination from health authorities

A Apple is preparing for the wave of vaccination related apps against Covid-19 that are appearing on the App Store, and will limit authorization to health authorities only. This is because several services are offering a kind of vaccine “passport” so that you can prove that you received the vaccine.

However, the Cupertino giant is concerned about possible fraud related to this that may arise, and thus, only applications developed in partnership with health authorities will be accepted on its platforms.

Coronavirus care

The announcement was made in developers page of Apple and explains that the company will review apps linked to Covid-19 vaccination passes. “To ensure that these apps handle sensitive data responsibly and provide reliable functionality, they must be submitted by developers working with entities recognized by public health authorities, such as test kit manufacturers, laboratories or healthcare providers,” the statement says.

This is not new, Apple The U.S. has been taking this approach with apps related to Covid-19 since the beginning of the pandemic, but now it is reinforced for the passports that are emerging. One example occurred in Los Angeles County, when the state health department announced an app to store vaccination data for its 10 million residents in partnership with a startup. In this case, since the source was official, the service was accepted into the App Store.

The problem is that the Apple understands that not all governments will have frameworks to create official apps for this, which will generate a series of “pirate” applications, which, in addition to being able to falsify these passes, may not have a guarantee of security for the stored data.

In another initiative, the Cupertino giant announced a partnership with Google a few months ago to show information about the pandemic. The idea is to avoid Fake News and provide a reliable space.