 that it gets us to important stakeholders that we would not have had an access to before. I think that in and of itself has been so huge and transformational for us as a startup. You know that these are some of the top people in the world that you can connect with to try and identify people who get the paradigm shift and who've placed that at the heart of their strategy, whether it's a business or a foundation, but really place that internet strategy and not as a peripheral thing. I think that's really where the value is for people like us at DeSolanator. I think the uplink connection has been huge for us because we always have international ambitions. We are always hoping to gain kind of some community connections with World Health Organization and get introduced to different healthcare systems and I think like uplink has done a great job with the excellent process. Being part of this cohort has been absolutely amazing and making sure that we are in touch with the right people again at the right time and ensure that our technologies and services are able to not only help with COVID-19, but in any way that we can impact the overall scientific and medical community. I really think that uplink has the opportunity to do a tremendous amount in connecting in supporting entrepreneurs who really are the vanguards, the entrepreneurs, the ones who are out there pushing for change and reimagining our world. Good morning and good evening everyone. It is my great pleasure to welcome you all to our session on restoring cross-border mobility. Over the last year, the COVID-19 pandemic has all but decimated the aviation, travel and tourism sector, wreaking havoc on economies, international mobility and the movement of people and essential goods. Seafarers are stranded, thousands of planes are grounded and millions of jobs and dollars have been lost. But science and technology and global cooperation has offered us a light at the end of this dark tunnel and the World Economic Forum is dedicated to using its platform to restore international mobility in a manner that is safe, clean and inclusive. The last few years we've worked on addressing travel and border security by harnessing technologies such as digital identity, distributed ledgers and biometrics to keep travelers and destinations safe. We've also worked very closely with the health sector on protocols for pandemic preparedness. However, 2020 has further reinforced the need for these sectors and others, like global supply chain and transportation, to work together. The Common Trust Network is the forum's platform for stakeholders in tech, health and mobility to address the challenge of trust in health data and credentials for the purpose of travel and commerce. The network brings together multiple governments with providers and users of digital wallets and health passes to establish common standards, protocols and registries for the trusted sharing of test or vaccination records, putting the individual at the center and empowering them with access to their most important health information. This is first and foremost a health challenge, which has drastic impact on aviation, tourism, shipping and supply chains, and I implore all relevant stakeholders to join us as we tackle this shared challenge to create a global public good. I'm pleased to hand over to our moderator for this session, Keir Simmons, Senior International Correspondent from NBC News, who will lead our discussion with our esteemed panelists. Over to you, Keir. Hey, Lauren. Thank you very much, Lauren, upping their head of aviation, travel and tourism for the World Economic Forum. And what a year in tech and in health and in travel, an extraordinary year, a challenging year. We have a great panel to talk about all of the issues that is raised and the positives that we've seen. We have Dr. Harsh Vardhan, the Union Minister for Health and Family Welfare, Science and Technology and Earth Science of India, and Chairman of the Executive Board of the World Health Organization. We have David Sin, Co-Founder, Group President and Deputy Chairman of Fullerton Health. Robin Toombs, CEO and Co-Founder, Yoti, which, as you know, stands for your own trusted identity. And Sabrina Chow, President, delegate at BIMCO, a stunning year and a year in which big tech has taken off. People have had to find new solutions. And also a year where we've seen nationalism and protectionism, a countervailing force, if you like. Just to give one example, just think about the split screen of this. In Europe, right this week, you have this unedifying picture of governments squabbling over who should get vaccines first. Whereas in India, you've just seen India airlift 5 million vaccines to the Indian Ocean region, to Myanmar, Bangladesh, Mauritius, Seychelles. And India is doing that right at the moment where it is just beginning to try to vaccinate its own more than a billion people. And of course, that Indian solution is the right solution when it comes to vaccines, because we know that unless you vaccinate the whole world, you don't tackle the coronavirus. But what that just illustrates is how we are battling in the world with these two countervailing forces, what we need to do versus the panic and the fears and the concerns of populations and countries. So if I can start with you, Dr. Vardan, could you just give us the picture? You're clearly somebody who likes hard work. While you are a minister in India, you also, during the pandemic, took the chairmanship of the executive board of the World Health Organization. Could I start with you with the question, what are the positives and what are the negatives that you've seen in the past year? And what do you see as the challenges and the hopeful signs looking forward? I think if I could correctly follow what you asked me was that what is the greatest challenge right now for like restoring this cross-border movement of people and the various groups and of course, other things. You see, the COVID-19 pandemic, it has gravely wounded the world economy with serious consequences, impacting all the communities all across the world and individuals. It has also hit supply chains and it has therefore impacted trade and development in a major way. Moving rapidly across borders along the principal arteries of the global economy, the spread of the virus has benefited from the underlying interconnectedness of globalization. In the context of public health, I would since I look after health and science and technology, I will be focusing more on the public health side of it. And I would say that in the context of public health, clear, transparent and timely sharing of crucial information on public health emergencies by undertaking rapid risk assessment and disseminating the risk. This is the key to striking a balance between public health and trade and also travel. Conducting such risk assessments would entail rapid analysis of causative agents, their origin and transmission dynamics, geographic spread, the pathogenicity of the disease, the population and age groups which are affected, the associated fatality, the potential impact on health, livelihood and also the economy. Additionally, it is imperative to have standard operating procedures to streamline operations of international contact tracing also. In the context of COVID-19 detection of mutant variants in some of the countries which has led to resurgence in cases, this has emerged as another impediment in dialing down the existing travel and trade restrictions that countries have put up in a bid to restrict the spread of COVID-19. So, although we have to ultimately develop the mechanisms from where we were one year back, I think a lot of things have improved further, but certainly we have to act with a lot of patients also and with a lot of meticulous precision and vision and take care of the whole issue in a very, very, I would say, dedicated, sincere, committed and scientific manner. Okay, Dr. Vardhan, that's a great kind of set up for us, if you like. David Sin, you'll correct me if I'm wrong. I think you have 12,000 medical providers around the world. In nine countries. So, that's quite a logistical challenge. What have been your breakthroughs and your frustrations? Thank you, Ken. Good day to everyone. I think Mason Apex largest managed care organization currently with about 13 million patients across the markets you mentioned. We have been and we've been blessed to partner with governments across the region. We have also been working to enter into multiple PPPs with the public health system. And I think if I may just pick up the point, some of the challenges we're faced, as Minister Vardhan had said, is really an efficient and timely sharing of information, not just within the public health system, but really between the public and the private health systems as well. We have been an integral partner to governments and health systems, especially in COVID. I want to experience in Singapore being one of the first few countries to implement large-scale COVID-19 vaccination programs across the country. We today run 50% of the country's vaccination centers in partnership with the Ministry of Health here in Singapore. I think we face multiple challenges. I think one blessing we've had is the relationship between the public and the private health systems in Singapore are relatively good, which means information ramping up logistics. And earlier to our point, mobilization of resources, especially health workers that are either trapped in Singapore that can't go back to their home countries or even Singaporeans, have been a relative challenge. From our perspective, as we serve close to 4,000 patients a day across our facilities in vaccinations, we run into all sorts of challenges from scheduling patients, to applying and administering the vaccines, to ensuring that patients and customers would stay on for observations. I think it's also been important for us to highlight that prior to vaccination, and this is really important because you also want to be in a position to effectively test screen for on a large-scale basis for COVID-19 across the region, not just in one country but across borders. And the policing or rather the auditing of such testing and screening capabilities across the 10 countries that we're present in do present quite a bit of SOP and protocol challenges. I think the last point I would say, and this is really not so much a call to action but really our own experience, is really the more private institutions and private organizations look towards entering into PPPs with the public systems, be it the health, the travel, the economic ministries, the better it is for all of us across the world. That's your cue, Robin Toones. I have to ask you one question, which is what is that kind of cell phone to the left of your shoulder? And then of course just pick up from where David left off there, because what you're trying to do is to create integrated tech that can enable people to travel more easily, both in terms of work and in terms of vacations. Yeah, hi Keir. I think the biggest challenge for us as a business has been, we're able to do a lot of things online and this is a very good example of that using video conferencing. We can actually do a lot of work quite quickly with lots of people who otherwise we might have had to wait to book meetings and go and see them and sometimes actually that slows people down, but in other areas it's really, really difficult. So we've been working a lot with biotechnology and health labs and actually not being able to go and see those people to work on the machines to understand how we need to interact with those machines. You really need to be able to go and see people and work with them in the lab or in their offices to do that and that's been a real challenge and we've seen how a lot of those biotech companies they need to be able to move their wet mixes from Poland to the US and at the moment that's really difficult. There aren't as many planes flying, the planes may not go direct. You've got to keep that really cold. So there's a huge amount of challenges because the travel sector is effectively at the moment not kind of open skies as per normal and I think probably the biggest challenge but also hopefully the biggest opportunity is to kind of restore trust in that kind of sector where people can across countries and across sectors and across relying parties actually be confident that somebody in the maritime sector has been tested, that might be on board ship or it might be at the last port but you need a really efficient way for all employees and all people including passengers to be able to prove who they are, prove that they've got the right credentials to do X or Y and without that I think the world's found it actually very difficult this year to kind of scale up some of the testing, some of the ways have been relying on that and clearly if you want to go to Gadance for a day but you've got to go into vaccination, sorry you've got to go into lockdown for 10 days quarantine you don't go so there's a huge amount of challenge there. We need a system which is interoperable and allows lots and lots of businesses to trust the relying kind of information credentials from other businesses and from other individuals. That's so interesting even in the tech world face-to-face is valuable. Sabina Chow you know all about these challenges of just moving people around, how tough has it been and where have you had successes despite that? Thank you Kier and thank you for putting me last because I think you know it actually makes a lot of sense that we hear from the government, the health sector, the tech sector and I can present you a problem that requires everybody's help to resolve this and that comes into the maritime sector. I think overall you know in line with this topic restoring cross-border mobility that in terms of the transportation of goods that pretty much has throughout the pandemic been efficient you know that we managed to deliver goods to where they need to go but the cost of that would be the people that makes that happen which are our seafarers and globally we have 1.7 million seafarers worldwide and depending on what statistics you read there are currently between 300,000 to 500,000 seafarers stuck at sea unable to go home and it is exactly because there's this breakdown of trust between governments and between borders that don't allow you know our seafarers that you know provide all these goods and services to all the countries and all the people that we use at our home that they're not allowed to get home because there's this breakdown of trust and if you think about the complexity of the issue you know you know Robin talks about you know the infrastructure that needs for it to happen you need the frontline health worker to administer all these test kits and vaccinations so it is a huge huge problem and you're at the complexity of a ship with a crew let's say an Indian crew that goes from China to Brazil and the contract is up and they need to get home and then number one there's no flight to get them from Brazil back to back to India and number two they probably need visa for them to be able to get off the ship and number three they need to have a valid test kit to show that they are COVID negative so you can see the complexity of that issue that nobody wants to deal with because yes you know there is 1.7 million seafarers that basically transport around 10 billion tons of goods in 2020 last year so if you think about the efficiency of it it's actually very high but in terms of the sheer number of people it's actually a very small percentage so it's very hard to get all the governments and get all the organizations together to deal with such a complex issue that we are presented with and am I right in saying is it 400 000 seafarers are stranded right now because countries don't want to let them in because they're from a different country that's right I mean depending on statistics there are according to the ILO the international labour organization that number is 300 000 in September and then there are articles that goes from 300 000 400 000 to 500 000 so I would just take the average 400 000 roughly that but still you know it's a staggering percentage of all the seafarers in the world that represents like over 15 percent. Minister India is a tech leader and you have shown a lot of tech savvy in your testing and vaccination programs how do we solve though the kind of problem that Sabrina is talking about with you with India a billion people how do you get then all integrated and then how do you solve the challenges of cross-border mobility? Well you know I would like to offer my comments of on the situation existing right now where we stand whether it is in India or anywhere else in the world though the International Air Transport Association and a few countries in Europe are already pondering on the idea of a COVID-19 vaccination based immunity passports or a travel pass in a bid to ease travel restrictions. I personally feel and I would say that all the medical professionals and scientists will also have the same feeling that it is a bit too early to talk about the same. Though clinical trials have already suggested that the vaccines are effective at preventing one from getting seriously ill there are still you see critical unknowns such as we really don't know whether the about the efficacy of the vaccination and reducing transmission also the duration of humidity after vaccination and also the efficacy of the vaccine against the emerging variants of SARS-CoV-2 virus etc. So you think it's really too early to talk about vaccine passports as they're known? You see I think in view of the above that I mentioned just now we are of the view that we may have to wait for some more time for evidence to emerge to take further decision on this matter. How soon do you think that would be? How quickly do you think we could get to a point where there's an integrated system? I think you see further ask your question on the standardization of these implementation frameworks and all whether for sharing of crucial information on public health issues I must say that it is the international contact tracing or immunity passports that shall ultimately hold the key to ensure their international acceptability. Such frameworks should be used on sound principles of equity and privacy and I personally feel right now being the director of the executive board of WHO that WHO as a UN body can play a lead role in achieving a global consensus on such frameworks and then I would say that developing such cross-border mobility experiences will require a cooperation between the health sector as well as aviation travel and tourism sector stakeholders. It's one of the issues for you in your dealing with as we know more than a billion people is one of the issues for you ensuring you have the trust of your people? You see we have enjoyed the trust of 1.35 billion people in a big way and under the leadership of our prime minister Narendra Modi you see the whole country and the whole society stood like a rock behind him and every appeal that was made so the whole country has a lot of confidence in what the government does because we have involved everybody it has been a total government total society and everyone in the society all stakeholders whether the industry corporate sector and scientists professionals everybody has been on board. I feel that such changes will certainly require a coordinated harmonized approach and it has to be it has to be a global scale as the pandemic itself definitely I think that timing is of the essence to prevent further harm to economies and make travelers comfortable with travel and of course from a scientific side I would say that recognizing that scientific consensus around testing and immunization is not yet mature enough and that global guidance around testing has yet to be developed there is a flexible model that can help us move past the current fragmentation and that can evolve and adapt as the science matures. Some really important points there David Sin trust are we really are we really going to have vaccines we can trust will people trust them that's your that's your wheelhouse. I think gradually people have minister I just want to ask David Sin because he's from Fullerton Health so he's dealing with these health issues but how he sees that same issue that important issue you've just raised David. Yeah I think I mean we clearly are not experts but what I can say is in helping to administer almost all of the publicly available vaccines that the Singapore government has procured for the Singapore population our experience at this point in time to date I would echo what minister has said is at best anecdotal from our perspective notwithstanding the fact that vaccines or any vaccines to come out have yet to be proven to be a hundred percent efficacy our view with respect to that here and also to minister's point actually is if we look at both from a public health perspective actually reopening up border control or cross-border mobility for people can actually be pioneered in some parts of the private sector so in our work with two institutions in Singapore both the cruise industry but also the airline industry namely Singapore Airlines what we started developing and we've seen requests from multinational corporations across Asia is how can you help our people travel safely across borders to facilitate employment labor and economic opportunities so we are doing a lot of trial and pilots with with corporates actually where so to speak what we consider as a safe trial piloted versions of vaccine stroke immunity passports specific for a working demographic or a certain population within a large employer group across the region and that's fascinating because the information and the data that we're receiving in such pilots can serve to be very very helpful as governments public health systems look to implement cross-border mobility on a much larger scale yeah and Robert is the tech there do we have the technical ability technological ability to have passports health passports just need you to unmute can you unmute yes sorry kid I think that the tech is is is there to do this job I think there's a risk management issue but over the next three six months as Israel the UK other countries who get a larger percentage of vaccines into arms we are going to learn from that data how much of a risk it is to allow somebody onto a plane you know who's got a vaccine will they still be at risk of transmitting even if they're protected to a high degree to themselves I think a lot of that data understood but just in terms of the tech side there are lots of different bits of tech how close are we to integrating yeah I think this is where the world economic forum and you know the who and some other you know kind of leading global organizations probably need to in the end take quite a firm lead on you know we need to have those interoperable standards there's a lot of things around W3C credentials and some of the other kind of protocols which would allow a wider set of tech businesses to work with health organizations to ensure that the evidence that a vaccine's happened what type of vaccine it is some of the vaccines may be better efficacy than others what type of test it's very different for a lateral flow test in terms of my risk compared to a PCR test but how many days old is it there's a huge amount of that information which if we can get the interoperable standards right over the next three six months and I you know apologize it's not more positive than that but I think over the next three six months quite a lot of that technology could allow businesses to to be trustworthy not just of their own staff so a good example is you know Virgin Atlantic is doing testing using our app using a health organization using those products that gives them a very easy way for those Virgin staff to prove to Virgin that they have been tested that day and they can put it on their yoti or they can receive that by email but as soon as you're trying to trust that somewhere else you know it's not really helpful to have a piece of paper or an email has come from exactly Sabrina two just six months is that a light at the end of the tunnel for you well yeah I'll take anything you know we've been facing this crisis in March last year so I've been living in it for a year but I think for us it's just we we want to know that there is a solution that is um being looked at and I absolutely agree with what Robin said that you know if WAF can take the lead and sort of by setting the standard and the protocol for that trust to be reestablished again between voters that is the most important staff that we need to take because with that with the trusted technology with the trusted medical solution then everything will come you know the flights will come the flights will come I'll see various yeah okay uh Sabrina chow dr harsh father and minister Robin tombs david sin uh it's been a great conversation