I don't think the status counts as medical information. It is an indication of whether you will participate to the event or not. Not participating may mean that you didn't want to participate, or that you didn't have a valid health pass. The database doesn't allow you to make the difference between the two.

Otherwise, any guest list would now be "medical information".

My bad. You are right. To me "status" referred to the health status, but it is about attendance to the event : A vaccinated person might choose to not participate.

Previous paragraph : "From that link, they can confirm their attendance, but only if they have a valid health pass."

Positive status implies a negative test result and negative status more than strongly correlates with positive test.

To me that's just semantics but in fact it is basically a medical status.

The list of participants to a sport competition has never been considered medical data (the CNIL even mentions that explicitly), even though it correlates with your medical status: you have not to be handicapped and to be healthy to run a marathon for instance.

In our case, the correlation is even thinner: a yes in the database means that you have been EITHER tested OR vaccinated, and a no means that you either haven't answered the invitation or didn't have a health pass.

In the end, I guess it would be for a judge to decide if that fits the definition of health data, but I am confident enough to leave it online.

> The list of participants to a sport competition has never been considered medical data

That's obviously quite different here.

> a yes in the database means that you have been EITHER tested OR vaccinated

Yes, that's extremely specific and that's why I think that's medical data.

In any case, my take is that this is complicated for no actual reason. I don't see the problem with the data contained in the 2D DOC QR code: Test result is needed, name and DOB is also needed. These are limited, reasonable data to share.

The only thing the database does is to replace test and/or vaccine details by a single flag. In effect the only information removed is indeed whether the person has been tested or vaccinated (unless a test is needed in any case). That seems of little value to me.

@mytailorisrich : How is it different from the attendance to a sport event for which you need a medical certificate ?

In addition to the added privacy, sanipasse has a very practical advantage: for event organizers, they don't have to scan the passes anymore, and for guests, they can validate their pass ahead of time, at home, instead of waiting in line for someone else to scan their pass at the entry of the event.

Medical certificates for sport events are very French... But the point is that they don't provide any medical data, they just state that the person is fine (in very general terms) performing that activity. For instance if you plan to go diving your GP will ask you a few questions and examine you then in effect write down "Sure, no problem".

Here you have a piece of information that very specifically says that persons is negative to Covid or vaccinated. Perhaps its does not say which one it is but my understanding is these are both medical piece of data anyway.

That's why I think this is very different. It's like if the only criterion for diving was being HIV negative. If a driving instructor was provided with a medical certificate that said "Sure, no problem" in that case it would be the same as getting the HIV test status of that person.

In that respect, the advantage of scanning the QR code is that there is no need to store sensitive data anywhere but within the QR code itself, which remains under the control of the individual. I think this is actually one consideration for deciding to implement the system that way.

> they don't provide any medical data, they just state that the person is fine performing that activity

It's the same with the "validated" boolean information. It does not provide more medical data, it just validates the absence of risk of you participating.

Not having HIV is obviously not required to go scuba diving because it is completely unrelated. But for shooting in certain kinds of movies for instance, you do need to test negative to HIV. And the list of actors in the movie is not considered "medical data".

In fact you are processing health data because you decode the QR code.

Therefore you must implement HDS valid data treatments and policy

The HDS policy is for hosting health data, if I understand it correctly.

Storing name, DOB, test date, test result in the QR code is a good solution IMHO and indeed using a database as a private organisation is fraught with problems.

Name and DOB are reasonably needed to assert the person's identity. Especially in France everyone carries an ID card so people can show ID and certificate together.

Safeguarding private information is important but some must be disclosed as necessary.

What surprises me is that the person's address is stored there. It seems to me absolutely unnecessary, and I'm not even sure where they get it from as the address on record by Social Security is not supposed to be disclosed even to health professionals.

I think this is only the address one gives freely to the vaccination/test center and which is not checked by anyone.

I still can't think of any case where it would be useful in conjunction with your vaccination status.

According to the article the address is not included in the 2D-DOC QR code.

I agree with you that it's not useful information for the purpose of a "health pass" used to gain access to venues and events. On the other hand, as a matter of Covid response strategy and enforcement of any restrictions (so for the authorities at large) it is very useful to know where a person that has tested positive lives.

That's right! I had read it wrong somehow. I don't find the information that is actually included to be too sensitive then.

It might have been useful in this case but the French government itself is not allowed to have a general-purpose database of citizen's addresses. Even the address that the social security has for contact purposes cannot be legally used for this (and is probably unreliable anyway as people forget to update their address when moving) and I don't think many people would have been comfortable with communicating their addresses for the purposes of Covid tracking.

Of course they can collect addresses for this if they want. It's not a general-purpose database, either.

One problem we're having in this pandemic is the squeamish and "can't do" attitude on about everything.