After receiving two doses of the Covid-19 vaccine, I kept my consultation card in a safe. As a leading instructor for NATO special forces training, I will need to prove my vaccination status before traveling to NATO headquarters in Belgium when personal learning resumes, probably this summer.
But my vaccination card, issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, will not actually be enough to prove that I am fully vaccinated, especially for international travel. The cards are very easy to fake.
With more than 335 million doses of the Covid-19 vaccine administered worldwide so far, according to the World Health Organization, the race to develop a “vaccine passport” for Covid-19 is underway.
While planning my trip to NATO, I soon discovered that an official form was not yet available in the United States – and it may not be soon.
Vaccine passports that can determine what people can and cannot do come loaded with ethical considerations. Vaccines are not yet readily available worldwide and people would be divided into “rich” and “poor”. Earlier this week, Dr. Mike Ryan, director of the WHO emergency program, said that using vaccine certification as a travel requirement “is not advisable”.
There are already proof of immunization cards for yellow fever and I used one for years to travel to Colombia, Ecuador or anywhere in the world, as needed.
Countries like Iceland, Poland, Portugal and Cyprus have already announced plans for vaccination proof certificates. The European Union hopes to present a “digital green pass”, which will combine information on vaccination, recovery from the disease and test results for people who are not yet fully vaccinated, possibly this week. And the Qantas airline has started its first customer test of a CommonPass digital health app, which allows people to upload their negative coronavirus test results or vaccination test for international flights.
The USA is nowhere near that.
The CDC is currently discouraging non-essential travel. A CDC spokesman said the agency “has not yet issued guidance on the management of vaccinated people while traveling and there are no international standards set for vaccines or vaccination documentation.”
The trips are expected to be included in the CDC guidelines, but the spokesman declined to say whether they would be issued in time for the summer.
Some states provide proof of the status of the Covid-19 vaccine, but it is not consistent and can be a complicated process.
Just a few examples from state health departments:
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Colorado, where I was vaccinated, requires that a certified form be emailed along with a copy of your driver’s license.
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California, which administered at least 11 million doses by Friday, has a system for checking the status of the vaccine, but “it is for use by providers and not for use by the general public,” according to Darrel Ng, a consultant senior communications officer for the Covid-19 task force in California.
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The Florida Department of Health responded by email, noting, “People can retrieve a copy of their vaccination records through the local County Department of Health or a private provider.” Given the high rate of “vaccine tourism” that Florida dealt with earlier this year, it is unclear what anyone would do if they were vaccinated in Florida but were not a resident.
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The New York State Department of Health did not respond to several requests.
There are companies in the United States developing vaccine certificates for smartphone applications. The idea is that, when flying to a country, you scan the application in border control. If you validate your vaccine status or negative test result, you can skip the country’s quarantine process. If you do not have a pass, you may be required to be quarantined, probably for 14 days at your expense.
IBM is working on a “digital health pass” that uses blockchain for security and authentication. IBM’s system will include vaccine status or test results for people who have not been vaccinated, said IBM spokeswoman Carolyn Castel of Watson Health.
The plan is for the United States government, through the Department of Health and Human Services, the CDC or individual state health departments, to upload verified vaccine data to the digital health pass. Castel did not say when it would be available.
For now, CDC vaccine cards are the best we have. In the future, when Covid-19 vaccines are widely available, some kind of vaccination certificate or passport is likely to be required, not only for travel abroad, but possibly even to enter sporting events, theaters, hotels or take a trip to a cruise ship.