The European Commission on Tuesday decided to allow member states to issue digital COVID certificates on recoveries based on high-quality Rapid Antigen Tests.

As of today, the new rules allow member states to issue certificates of recovery from COVID-19 based on the results of Rapid Antigen Tests (RAT), the Commission said after adopting a delegated act with new rules on COVID certificates.

Until now certificates were issued only on the basis of PCR tests.

In an effort to secure the reliability and precision of certificates, the tests used have to be listed on the joint EU RAT list and testing needs to be conducted by professional healthcare workers.

In order to facilitate safe travel, particularly of citizens who were infected with the Omicron variant, member states can now issue certificates based on high-quality RAT, Commissioner for Justice Didier Reynders said.

Commissioner for Health Stella Kyriakides said that adding Rapid Antigen Tests to the common EU list were based on independent and high-quality research.