You saw them on social media: health workers pose with a small card with the index size indicating that they have received their COVID-19 vaccine. Their appearance as a kind of status symbol may seem sinister: will society be divided into two levels, one of the vaccinated and card-bearing and one of the cardless?
Do not worry about a pandemic dystopia yet. We spoke to health professionals and public health experts about the SARS-CoV-2 vaccination card that is being distributed as a standard part of the vaccination process. And they say it’s a much less important piece of paper than it may seem, and it’s not even a big deal if someone loses it.
The Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) explains on its website that after the first vaccination, the vaccinees receive either a card or a printout telling them which coronavirus vaccine they have received. Currently, two different vaccines have been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA): one from Pfizer / BioNTech and one from Moderna. Both require two doses delivered in two separate shots to fully effect the vaccine. For the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine, patients receive the two doses three weeks apart; for the Moderna vaccine, the duration is four weeks.
This distinction is an important reason why the COVID-19 vaccine card is important, as it tells you – and perhaps your doctor or nurse – when to take the second dose.
“The vaccination card is a piece of paper that says, for example, you got the Pfizer vaccine, it’s the lot number, it’s a date you got it, and it’s the date you got your second dose,” he said. Amesh said. Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Safety. Adalja said it was nothing special. “It’s literally a thin piece of paper,” he added. “It’s not like a credit card, it’s not laminated, and it’s just for you to have a record of being vaccinated.”
Adalja noted that you always receive a printout or a card after receiving any vaccination.
“But most people just throw it in the trash before they leave the doctor’s office,” he said.
But for a virus like the new coronavirus, registration can be important for things like travel or, perhaps ultimately, for school. Vaccination may eventually be a requirement to enter certain countries. So if you throw the card away or lose it, does that mean you are not lucky?
Not quite. Litjen Tan, chief strategy officer of the immunization action coalition, told Salon that there is no need to worry. Technically, the card is a second form of documentation for receiving the COVID-19 vaccine. The first form is electronic.
“If they show up and say, ‘I lost my car, but I got my first dose,’ the provider authorized to give COVID-19 vaccines will be able to look it up in the electronic system,” Tan said. . . That said, I would obviously tell every patient who goes back for a second dose to call the provider and say, ‘I’m coming back to get my second dose, but I lost my card.’
For this reason, Tan said that it is not expected that fraudulent cards will be a problem. This is because for the time being, the card will also no longer be needed than to keep track of your vaccination schedule for the time being.
In the future, however, it can be used if you are traveling somewhere for which a COVID-19 vaccination is required.
“For international travel, it might be something, but it’s probably going to be a different kind of map,” Adalja said. “You can see it being used as a way to avoid a quarantine or a test if you are going to another country.”
Adalja compared it to how some countries need proof of a yellow fever vaccine to travel to them.
Tan agrees and notes that if COVID-19 certificates are required to travel in the future, it will not be a ‘faint’ card because it is too easy to fake.
Tan added that this is a good time for policymakers to discuss how potential COVID-19 vaccination certificates can also be used to reopen the US economy.
“I think we need to think about how we can make something like this operational for the future,” such as for business travel or increasing the capacity for small businesses, Tan said.
But it’s all ‘premature’ thinking, Tan said. At the moment, the goal is to get as many people vaccinated as possible.
“We are in the midst of a huge boom and we only have about 10 million people being vaccinated; we need to get more people vaccinated,” Tan said. “And then, once we get to the point where we’ve vaccinated maybe 40 percent of a community, maybe you can work with that, as well as the vaccine powers.”