Tiny rice-sized microchip implant which holds your Covid passport info unveiled

The tiny microchip can be scanned using a smartphone to bring up a person's vaccine certification

A tech firm claims to have developed a microchip that can be implanted in a human arm and hold your Covid passport information. Microchip technology company Dsruptive Subdermals, have created the chip using technology from one of its previous products, a chip that can be inserted into people to allow them access to buildings and lockers. The company says the technology can be used to scan for a person's vaccine certification as well. The chip just needs to be scanned by a smartphone to reveal your vaccine status. It measures just 2 millimetres by 16 millimetres in size and is inserted just beneath the skin. Hannes Sjoblad, managing director of Dsruptive Subdermals, said: "I have a chip implant in my arm, and I have programmed the chip so that I have my COVID passport on the chip, and the reason is that I always want to have it accessible." Scanning the chip with his phone brings up a PDF that shows all the details of his EU Digital COVID Certificate. https://twitter.com/afp/status/1473326898004512778 "This means it is always accessible for me or for anyone else, really, who wants to read me. For example, if I go to the movies or go to a shopping centre, then people will be able to check my status even if I don't have my phone," Sjoblad explains.

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But he was keen to point out that the implants are not tracking devices and only respond when they are scanned. "If you understand how these implants work, they don't have a battery. They cannot transmit a signal by themselves. So they are basically passive. They sit there asleep," Sjoblad said. "They can never tell your location, they're only activated when you touch them with your smartphone, so this means they cannot be used for tracking anyone's location." "It is easy to update the implant, you can use an app on your phone to change what is on the chip. So I can add new info to the chip every day — yesterday it was my Linkedin, today it's my COVID certificate, tomorrow it could be something else," Sjoblad told Insider.