A coalition of healthcare and technology companies, including Microsoft, Salesforce and Oracle, is working on an initiative that aims to make it easier for people to access their COVID-19 vaccination records digitally. As people start getting vaccinated against COVID-19, they may need to prove that they are being vaccinated so that they can return to work, school or travel, and having an easily accessible digital vaccination record can help. The coalition calls itself the Vaccine Credential Initiative (VCI).
“VCI’s vision is to empower individuals to obtain an encrypted digital copy of their vaccination evidence to store in a digital wallet of their choice,” according to a press release. If you do not want to use a smartphone, you can receive papers with QR codes that contain similar verifiable references.
According to VCI, they work according to the SMART Health Cards specification, which is designed to keep people vaccinated or laboratory results in a digital wallet. (More information on the specification is also available on GitHub.)
But VCI’s press release does not provide a timeline for when organizations administering COVID-19 vaccines will be able to make these records, so it’s unclear when you will be able to add one to a digital wallet. . And because people in the U.S. already receive paper cards that record when they receive their COVID-19 vaccines, it is unclear how the records would be transferred to the digital standard of VCI.
Another obstacle could be to get health centers to participate, as some providers have more resources to include these entries in the vaccination process than others will. There are also ethical questions about whether someone who can prove he has been vaccinated should have more freedoms than someone who is not.
VCI is not the first coalition to consider a digital COVID-19 vaccination record. Similar efforts are to model themselves on existing vaccine documents that some countries already require for admission. (This document contains vaccinations for diseases such as yellow fever or polio.) One attempt by Estonia and the World Health Organization began developing a digital COVID-19 vaccine certificate in October.