You saw them on social media: health professionals posing with a small index-sized card indicating they received their COVID-19 vaccine. Its appearance as a kind of status symbol may seem sinister: will society be divided into two layers, one with vaccinated and cardholders and the other with no card?
Don’t worry about a pandemic dystopia just yet. We spoke with health professionals and public health experts about the SARS-CoV-2 vaccine card, which is distributed as a standard part of the vaccination process. And they say it’s a much less important piece of paper than it might seem, and it’s not even a big deal if someone loses it.
The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) explains on its website that, after the first inoculation, vaccinees will receive a card or a printed copy informing which coronavirus vaccine they received. Currently, two different vaccines have been approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA): one from Pfizer / BioNTech and one from Moderna. Both require two doses given in two separate injections for the vaccine to reach full effectiveness. For the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine, patients receive the two doses three weeks apart; for the Modern vaccine, the time interval is four weeks.
This distinction is the main reason why the COVID-19 vaccine card is important, as it tells you – and perhaps your doctor or nurse – when the second dose will be.
“The vaccination card is a piece of paper that just says, for example, you took the Pfizer vaccine, this is the batch number, this is the date you received it and this is the date you receive the second dose”, said Amesh. Adalja, senior researcher at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. Adalja said it was nothing special. “It is literally a fragile piece of paper,” he added. “It is not like a credit card, it is not laminated and it is just for you to have a record that you have been vaccinated.”
Adalja recalled that after receiving any vaccination, you always receive an impression or a card.
“But most people just throw it in the trash before leaving the doctor’s office,” he said.
But for a virus like the new coronavirus, having that record can be important for things like travel or, perhaps, eventually school enrollment. In fact, being vaccinated may eventually be a requirement to enter certain countries. So, if you throw away or lose the card, does that mean you’re out of luck?
Not exactly. Litjen Tan, director of strategy for the Immunization Action Coalition, told Salon that there is no need to worry if that happens. Technically, the card is a second form of documentation for receiving the COVID-19 vaccine. The first form is electronic.
“If they come up and say, ‘I lost my car, but I took my first dose,’ the provider who was authorized to give vaccines COVID-19 will be able to search the electronic system,” said Tan. “That said, I would obviously say to any patient who is coming back for a second dose to call the provider and say, ‘I’m coming back for my second dose, but I lost my card.'”
For that reason, Tan said that fraudulent cards are not expected to be a problem. That’s because, for now, the card will also not be necessary for anything other than keeping track of your vaccination schedule for now.
However, in the future, it can be used for travel if you are traveling somewhere that requires a COVID-19 vaccination.
“For international travel it can be something, but it will probably be a different type of card,” said Adalja. “You could see this as a way to avoid a quarantine or a test when you are going to another country.”
Adalja compared the way some countries require proof of yellow fever vaccine to travel to them.
Tan agreed, noting that if COVID-19 certificates were needed for travel in the future, they would not be such “fragile” cards, because they are so easy to fake.
Tan added that now is a good time for lawmakers to discuss how potential COVID-19 vaccination certificates can also be used to reopen the U.S. economy.
“I think we should think about how we can operate something like this for the future,” such as for business travel or capacity building for small businesses, said Tan.
But all of this is “premature” thinking, said Tan. At the moment, the goal is to vaccinate as many people as possible.
“We are in the midst of a big sudden increase and we have only about 10 million people vaccinated; we need to vaccinate more people, ”said Tan. “And then, when we get to the point where we have maybe 40 percent of a vaccinated community, maybe you can work with that, as well as with vaccine certifications.”