Healix Rolls Out Major Upgrade To COVID Travel Safe ^Featured

Combining cutting edge technology with best in class medical and risk intelligence to enable business travel in the midst of the global pandemic

While the debate continues around the role of vaccine passports as a means to open up international travel, there has been a clear drive for business to get moving again. But for many organisations the big issue is how to do this while simultaneously prioritising employee health and navigating complex and changing international travel restrictions.

Since its launch in June 2020, COVID Travel Safe has provided hassle-free risk assessments of the medical and logistical risks of individual employee travel plans, enabling organisations to resume critical business travel within the pandemic.

Developed by our industry leading medical and risk management experts, the platform experience begins with the user filling out a personal profile that answers a number of questions about their intended trip alongside a Covid-19 specific medical questionnaire.

Based on the traveller’s unique profile and itinerary, the tool calculates a comprehensive “Risk Score” for each trip and delivers an instant, downloadable assessment of what risks the traveller may face.

To ensure that the platform is up-to-date and representative of the pandemic’s evolution, following a scheduled review, we are delighted to roll out the first major COVID Travel Safe upgrade which sees an update to our methodology and risk categories.

While COVID Travel Safe already measures a range of sub-risk factors including pandemic trend and Covid-19 testing access, alongside practical concerns such as travel bans and curfews, it now accounts for a traveller’s vaccination status.

Also included in the COVID Travel Safe upgrade:

• Personal Medical Risk: We have introduced an ‘Adjusted Risk’ rating, which will be assigned to those who have completed a full course of a Covid-19 vaccine. This rating is issued alongside the ‘Pre-Existing Medical Risk’, rather than replacing it, due to insufficient data on the longer term efficacy of vaccination.
• Country Pandemic Risk: This section now comprises six sub-risk categories, introducing ‘Testing’ (on the basis of test positivity rates), ‘Infection Rate’ and ‘Control Measures’. In this upgrade we have also included cases and deaths over the previous 7 days and the country’s progress in mass vaccination programmes.
• Country Logistical Risk: As governments have implemented, tested and adapted a range of policies to manage the spread of the virus, certain mechanisms have become more established as normative practice, and are introduced to varying degrees in most locations. We have split these into ‘Inbound Travel Logistics’ and ‘Local Logistics’ with high level descriptors. More nuanced information is included in the Snapshot paragraphs and an enhanced section for ‘Detailed Travel Regulations’. ‘Inbound Travel Logistics’ ratings are now supported with information from the market-leading IATA data feed.

Find out more, click here.