Post-COVID-19, moving about anywhere has made keeping a vaccination certificate handy a necessity. Today, many businesses check vaccination certificates from their customers and have made proof of vaccination an absolute requirement.
Not carrying your vaccination certificate? You’re not allowed to enter.
While you obviously cannot always carry a physical card with you at all times, carrying a digital version of the vaccination certificate is an easy way to go about it. This is not only a much easier track for the general public but also makes checking vaccination certificates much easier for the authorities.
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Why do authorities check vaccination certificates, and why is it important?
Vaccination certificates are crucial proof of a person’s compliance with vaccination laws. While proof of vaccination has been a formal practice for decades now, with every person entering US soil being required to show proof of vaccination for multiple infectious diseases including measles, hepatitis, mumps, and rubella among multiple others, the COVID-19 pandemic took the vaccine game to a whole new level. Thanks to COVID-19, checking vaccination certificates became a norm at almost all local and international businesses.
While vaccination certificates may seem like a hurdle to some, they exist for good for most people.
For many, vaccination certificates have brought about a sense of safety and security during a time of great doubt and confusion. These certificates also give more liberty to the people helping create a more normal-like society. Businesses that verify covid certificate, they create a level of trust between the business and the consumer.
Besides the social benefits, vaccination certificates are also of great benefit to public health. When every business and community area makes online verification of vaccination certificates a compulsion, these cards can help reduce the chance of unvaccinated people going out and about, risking other’s lives which specifically would include children, sick, or the elderly who cannot stay at home for reasons one or another.
How to access your own COVID-19 vaccination certificate
When COVID-19 vaccinations came around, barely any options were available for vaccination certification, and those who required vaccination certificates had to resort to visiting local centres and state departments making the whole process extensive and difficult for the people.
Absence of an organized federal structure for the generation and checking of vaccination certificates led to a haphazard system for the general public who wanted a certificate, as well as for businesses looking for some regulated system for online verification. Even when vaccination cards were being produced, the lack of a centralized vaccine data regulation system made it difficult for those who wanted their certificates of vaccination verified. This became even stronger of a requirement when the anti-vaxxers started generating fake vaccine cards.
Different states having different healthcare departments also resulted in difficulty in setting up a regulated and organized system to issue and check vaccination certificates.
Vaccine Credential Initiative (VCI) for public health – generating and checking vaccination certificates made easy
After recognizing and understanding the haphazard situation when it came to vaccine certificates, the Vaccine Credential Initiative or the VCI was launched in January 2021. The organization was set up with the goal of streamlining the standards and procedures of the healthcare industry with specific regard to vaccination, as well as physical and online certificates for verification of vaccination.
Besides the COVID-19 vaccination data, VCI also incorporated, within its system, other vaccination records to create a SMART Health Card which would help with Vaccine certificate verification.
The Vaccine Credential Initiative is essentially a coalition of multiple organizations, including both public and private entities, that work together to make the goal of effectively verifying or checking the vaccination certificates, of the masses, a success. VCI member organizations include companies such as Microsoft, Google, IBM, and Mayo Clinic, among many others.
Currently, VCI’s SMART Health Cards are being used in all states of the country. Apart from the United States, these Cards are also in use in 15 other countries including Canada, Hong Kong, Qatar, and Rwanda.
How to get your own vaccination certificate from the VCI
The process of online verification of vaccination through VCI is fairly simple. The VCI works such that it collects data from the very root source i.e., the clinic, hospital, or pharmacy where a patient gets vaccinated. The clinic, hospital, or pharmacy then sends the patient’s data to the state’s immunization program. Once you register with the VCI, it sends your name, date of birth, and zip code to the state, which in return, looks for the vaccination record, if it exists. Upon finding the data in the state’s registry, VCI creates an encrypted and verifiable QR code that can then be used digitally or can be printed as proof of vaccination.
The end-users can then simply keep this QR code, however, they please, with themselves and it will ease any authority wanting to check vaccination certificates.
When created in this manner, the certificate also eases the process of vaccination certificate verification.
Checking vaccination certificates at large and associated privacy concerns – what it might mean for future
One of the biggest concerns with vaccine certificates is that they might result in access to individual healthcare information essentially becoming public property which would not only be a privacy breach but also a risk to the safety of the individual. Normalizing such a system would have unfavourable results and for this reason, vaccine certificates have also been getting dubbed as vaccine passports, with a negative connotation associated.