Los Angeles County residents who receive the COVID-19 vaccine will receive a digital record of their vaccination that they can store in their Apple wallet, according to Bloomberg.
The county is partnering with software company Healthvana to start offering vaccination registration for the Wallet app on the iPhone or Google’s competing platform as a way to remind patients who received the first dose of the vaccine to come for the second dose weeks later.
Our country is in a historic struggle against Coronavirus. Add America’s change to your Facebook or Twitter feed to stay on top of news.
The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine requires a second dose to be administered 21 days apart, while the second dose of Moderna is administered 28 days after the first.
“We are really concerned. We really want people to go back to that second dose, ”Claire Jarashow, director of vaccine-preventable disease control at the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, told Bloomberg.
“We just don’t have the capacity to handle hundreds of requests for medical records to find people’s first doses and when they need to get the second,” she told the media.
Technology can also be a way for people to prove that they have been vaccinated against the virus.
Healthvana is reportedly in discussions about applying the technology with employers, universities and concert halls. Healthvana’s CEO, Ramin Bastani, told Bloomberg that the record could be useful to “prove to airlines, to schools, to prove to those in need” that a person actually received the injection.
Bastani said he believes other similar services will emerge as more people receive the vaccine.
“It won’t be like a credit card that you can use in the United States,” he told Bloomberg. “Sometimes you can pay cash, sometimes you can use your Apple Wallet.”
The Los Angeles-based company began working with the county earlier this year to provide coronavirus test results to patients in the area.
Los Angeles County, the most populous in the country, reported more than 733,000 cases and 9,555 deaths during the pandemic, according county public health data.
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT CORONAVIRUS NOW
A NEW CORONAVIRUS VARIANT IN THE UNITED KINGDOM: WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
FROM THE LABORATORY BENCH TO THE UPPER ARM: HOW THE COVID-19 VACCINES ENTERED INTO BEING
5,000 BAGS FOR BODY AND 60 MORGUE TRUCKS SHIPPED TO COVID-RAVAGED CALIFORNIA
FIRST WILD ANIMAL IN THE USA POSITIVE TESTS FOR COVID-19
THE PFIZER VACCINE IS GIVEN IN TWO DOSES – BUT THE FDA SAYS THE FIRST DOSE ALONE IS HIGHLY EFFECTIVE