Retired Tennessee farmer Tom Anderson of 75 years, and his wife Barbara, of 64, they traveled to Egypt in September to celebrate their number wedding anniversary 25 on a Nile River cruise. After their plane arrived in Cairo, an Egyptian official asked them for electronic proof of vaccination against COVID – 15 in a QR code.
“We had our real card (from the CDC) and they said, “Where are your QR codes?” remembers Barbara. And we said: “We don’t know what they mean.”
Tom adds: “We did our best to reason with them and they told us:“ No, they must have the QR code. ”
Egyptian officials put them on the next flight to Memphis. They came home after 57 total hours on your round trip. Apparently, Egyptian standards had changed since the Andersons prepared their documents, now requiring electronic proof of vaccination.
His story is extreme, but it shows how fluid and inconsistent the task of proving can be. your vaccination status in a world where that particular information is becoming increasingly relevant.
Depending on where you live, you may need to show that you have been vaccinated to keep your job, eat at a restaurant, attend a concert or ball game, work out at a gym, or travel. So it’s worth having your credential handy.
The most obvious way to do this is with the CDC vaccination card that vaccine providers usually deliver when you receive the vaccine. But many employers and facilities are encouraging workers and consumers to use digital verification apps, and some consumers may prefer not to carry their card everywhere, hence the appeal of a digital vaccination “passport” on your cell phone.
However, responding electronically to what is basically a simple yes or no question has become surprisingly contentious, confusing, and exhausting. This is because the rules vary by country and state and some states refuse to issue or even allow such a credential. As if this were not enough, different companies offer their own versions of COVID vaccination passports – 19.
“In the United States this is a disaster, because there is no centralized approach,” says Darren Toh, CEO of AOKpass, a Singapore-based company that works with some American companies to verify that employees are vaccinated, as with some airlines.
“It’s disconcerting,” he continues. America seems to be this unique set of chaotic people moving at different speeds and in different directions. It can be compared with the response of the European Union, which is quite centralized. ”
Some North American cities such as New York and Los Angeles require that people be vaccinated to enter most interior spaces But in most parts of the country, figuring out when you may need to show proof of vaccination is a confusing conundrum. For example, among amusement parks in Southern California, Disneyland does not require a vaccination credential or recent COVID testing – 19, but Universal Studios Hollywood , 35 miles north, yes it does.
“We’re caught up in this fractured, uneven, and confusing system of makeshift vaccine certifications, and we just have to deal with this,” says Dr. Josh Michaud, associate director of global health policy for the Kaiser Family Foundation. “Depending on where you live in the United States, you may have rules against the use of digital vaccine certifications… Especially in Republican states, mostly conservative.”
“But for the other states , where it is optional, you are faced with a lot of different potential options, ”he continues. “Once you explain all that, you have basically confused people.”
Given this reality, the following are some ideas on how to know the options that consumers have to demonstrate that they are vaccinated.
How to check that you are vaccinated
¿ Are you having trouble knowing the vaccine verification options? Go to our Situation Specific Guide , later.
The Reliable Printed Document
First, the good news: Your CDC printed vaccination card works in most places, whether you want to attend a basketball game, go to a concert or visit a museum.
Dr. Chris Beyrer, professor of public health and human rights at the Bloomberg Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, carries his printed card in his wallet everywhere, but acknowledges that relying on that document for itself has only downsides. “If you lose it or it gets destroyed, there isn’t necessarily an easy way to get it back,” he says.
Others might not want to carry that pesky card everywhere. Fortunately, a photo of both sides of the CDC card on your phone, or in print, is generally accepted as proof of vaccination. “In this case, more, is more, have as many forms of the document as you can,” says Beyrer.
Digital proof
Right now, close to 150 millions of Americans can also access digital evidence of their COVID vaccines – 19 , in accordance with the Vaccination Credential Initiative (VCI) , a coalition of public and private organizations working on licensing standards for SMART health cards, a fancy term for records digital doctors, such as vaccination histories. (Records can also be printed.) Its members include the electronic health records companies Epic and Cerner, as well as Microsoft.
“A printed CDC card, as well as a photocopy, is not an easy means of verification, you can forget and it is also subject to forgery, ”says Dr. Brian Anderson, VCI Co-Founder and Chief Digital Health Physician at MITER , a public contractor working on government funded research. “Digital vaccination verification tools, such as SMART health cards, contain a verifiable machine-readable QR code that is tamper-proof and can be easily retrieved if you lose a hard or digital copy.”
However, things get confusing when you try to figure out which digital credential to use. Unlike a United States passport, which is the same for all Americans, a digital credential can come from one of many state or local entities, or dozens of private companies. But unlike regular passports, vaccination credentials have no cost for people, since the cost is borne by the government or companies.
Your first step should be to check if your status issues COVID vaccination credentials – 19 or work with an outside company. States with their own immunization verifications include New York and California , where 7.5 million residents had downloaded their QR code SMART health card in early November, according to the California Department of Public Health.
The currently lists eight states that issue their own credit cards. SMART health. In theory, any state can issue electronic proof of your vaccination or allow an outside company to do so, because every state in the United States maintains their own immunization records, as do New York City, Washington, DC, and San Antonio. CDC maintains a list of links and contacts for these registries , known as Immunization Information Systems .
The County of Los Angeles and the City of New York (via Google Play or Apple Store ) also allow vaccinated individuals to download a credential they sponsor.
” I’m not really sure what the point of this app is, ”wrote one user in a review on the Google Play store from the NYC COVID Safe app. “Do you take a photo of your vaccination card and store it locally? You could also create a photo directory for your vaccination card. It is exactly the same thing ”. Spokespersons for the Los Angeles and New York mayors did not respond to requests for comment on the matter.
Apple iPhone users with iOS 15.one can also download verifiable credentials (instead of a simple photo of a vaccination card) for their Wallet or Health app. Google offers a similar feature for Android devices .
As if things weren’t confusing enough, MyIR, an app used in seven states (Arizona, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Dakota, West Virginia, Washington, and West Virginia, as well as Washington, DC ) announced in late October that digital vaccination credentials were temporarily suspended (PDF). (Residents of these states can still obtain other digital vaccination credentials.) The problem is that MyIR gathers data from various states and providers rather than directly on behalf of each, according to VCI, the group that works on the standards for SMART health cards.
” Chaos is the right word, ”says Mike Popovich, CEO of STChealth, which runs MyIR. “It seems that there is a certain race to gain control of the credential space, which I suppose is natural.”
Other difficulties
Once you find out what options are available in your state, it may take just a few minutes for you to have your information, but you may also need to spend a little time to get your digital certification vaccination. State websites often ask for name, date of birth, and mobile phone number or email address, but each system has its own peculiarities.
For example, the COVID Vaccine Portal – 19 North Carolina instructs users to do click on ‘Forgot Your Username’ the first time they log in.
My own attempt to download New York State’s Excelsior Pass was unsuccessful, and the website instructed me to call the pharmacy where I received my shots. After calling CVS twice and 15 minutes on standby I could update the phone number they had on file. Then I went back to the Excelsior site and got an error message: “We seem to have some problems internal that prevent us from helping you ”. I tried it a few hours later and it somehow worked.
Generally speaking about vaccination certification efforts, JP Pollak, co-founder of Commons Project , a non-profit group whose projects include a vaccination credential that can be downloaded through the Apple App Store or Google Play , says: “We are experiencing more and more difficulties.”
Ramin Bastani, CEO of Healthvana , providing digital COVID vaccination credentials – 19 for Los County Angeles, says that tiny differences in the data can overwhelm the system. “It is not a perfect process,” he says. “You may have registered in a particular area, and your name is James, but then elsewhere, you registered your name as Jim for the second dose. So all the information needs to be standardized in some way. ”
I ran into more hurdles when I tried to get additional testing of my COVID vaccines – 19.
The Epic electronic health records system provides vaccination credentials to 64 millions of Americans through their MyChart system, and that number will grow to 100 million next year, according to enforcement executive Nick Frenzer. But when I logged into my account, MyChart showed information for only one of my two doses of the vaccine. Frenzer later said that there was a discrepancy between the New York State record and my healthcare provider’s record.
CVS , Walmart and other large pharmacy chains also offer digital records from their websites. When I tried to download my immunization record through the CVS website, I received a “PM2 error” message regarding my identity verification. Instead of spending time untangling the problem, I gave up.
Controversy over COVID vaccination passports – 19
Added to the confusion is the politicization of vaccines and COVID documentation – 19. 21 states, including Florida and Texas, banned vaccination passports altogether, according to the National Academy for State Health Policy, which maintains a map showing various state mandates and other details related to COVID .
“First of all, we oppose the idea of a national Green Pass,” says Christina Pushaw, secretary of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis Press. “COVID Vaccination Records – 19 are private medical information. Proof of COVID vaccine should not be required – 19 To participate in society and the Green Pass creates a divided society that we don’t want to see in Florida. ”
Green Pass is a vaccination credential system that was first used in Israel, and later adopted in Europe and other countries.
The position of the Florida governor’s office reflects the sentiments of many Americans. For example, for August, the 47% of Texans strongly opposed to a vaccination passport and only the 35% strongly supported the idea, according to a survey of the University of Texas at Austin. . Some companies involved in COVID vaccine documentation – 19 say in have been subjected to harassment or threats.
However, residents of Florida, Texas and other states where vaccination passports have been banned may still have to prove their status outside of their states of origin, especially when visiting cities with strict vaccination mandates for many public spaces. For example, anyone wishing to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City must present a CDC printed vaccination card or photo, the Excelsior Pass from New York, a vaccination record from the City of New York or an application of vaccines against COVD – 19, or a official registration from somewhere outside of New York
And what happens to those who do not have proof of having been vaccinated? “Visitors who cannot show their proof of vaccination are welcome to enjoy the Museum’s virtual offers”, said a museum official .
If you live in a state that does not offer digital credentials, check to see if your pharmacy or electronic health system linked to your healthcare provider can provide you with a digital proof. Otherwise, bring your printed card when necessary.
Convenience for whom?
The The simplest proof of vaccination, the CDC printed certificate, requires the least effort for individuals and can offer the most privacy. “For those concerned about privacy, you can go the option that does not require scanning a QR code,” says Lucy Yang, Community Director of COVID Credentials Initiative . “But from a public health perspective, options that do not require verification of a digitally signed credential are more prone to fraud.”
The cybersecurity company Check Point has reported that the prices of the fake cards of the CDC soared up to $ 200 each in early fall amid a boom in demand with the arrival of multiple vaccine mandates. States like New York have warned against the use of fraudulent cards, and the United States Customs and Border Protection Office has seized shipments of false cards .
Companies that must verify many credentials tend to prefer digital vaccination certificates against COVID – 15 because they are faster to scan. At some facilities, including those used by sports teams such as the Las Vegas Raiders, Seattle Seahawks, Nashville Predators, and Golden State Warriors, they have partnered with CLEAR , a publicly traded for-profit company, whose security check stations you could have noticed in the airport terminals. CLEAR is also accepted as a checkpoint for COVID vaccination status – 19 to enter Hawaii .
CLEAR does not have direct access to state immunization records, so they ask people to bring their CDC card and information, scan the issued QR codes by the states or are linked to a vaccine provider or pharmacy that works with them.
Privacy and other concerns
Many healthcare experts think that a unified national system of COVID vaccination credentials – 19 similar to the European Union Green Pass, or similar programs in some Asian countries, it would be much easier and less confusing. “I think these kinds of small, targeted approaches are probably fraught with problems,” says Beyrer at Johns Hopkins. “This way in which the country is divided between these political lines is a great challenge.”
With so many private companies and government agencies rapidly developing digital vaccination credentials, some experts fear that these systems incorporate vulnerabilities security and privacy. What’s more, vaccination applications are typically not covered by federal laws that restrict the release of medical information.
“The printed vaccination proof generates fewer worries, just like a digital photo of a printed card displayed on a phone screen,” wrote the Electronic Frontier Foundation in an August article . “Of much more concern are the scannable vaccination credentials, which could be used to track the physical movements of people through checkpoints and over time.”
Kaliya Young, expert on digital identity verification who works at COVID Credentials Initiative, is also concerned that the rush to digitize important documents, including health cards and electronic driver’s licenses, will result in faulty designs.
“Digitization is something positive, but not the lack of discernment in the options driven by health IT staff who do not care about privacy by pushing static QR codes like those on SMART health cards, “he says. Young says that anyone who has access to the static QR codes can easily copy them and maybe someone who is not the owner can use it. “We will be trapped in faulty systems that have themselves created privacy breaches.”
Experts at the Electronic Frontier Foundation are also concerned that a company like CLEAR might combine vaccination details with other personal information. “There is no logical limit to the way in which centralized digital IDs, such as those created by CLEAR, could be extended to our lives by facilitating proof of vaccination and thus new vectors can be introduced to track our movements and activities, “the EFF team wrote in the August article mentioned above.
CLEAR spokesman Ken Lisaius says:” CLEAR does not sell or rent information from its members. Security is the backbone of everything CLEAR does. ”
A company, iProov, has developed a vaccination credential that is based on facial recognition technology . “Without it, a visitor would have to present a vaccination card and a form of identification and wait while the person at the door watches to check if the names match, and then see the person to double check if the photo in the Identification matches the person, a process that takes time and effort for everyone, ”says Andrew Bud, founder and CEO of iProov. “With facial recognition, the person simply places their card or QR code in front of the camera, looks at it for a moment, and then goes on their way.”
Privacy advocates have often expressed their concern about facial recognition, but to date the iProov vaccination verification system is not being used in the United States, Bud said, and would be used only on a voluntary basis, anyway.
So what should you do?
Bottom line is looking for correct COVID vaccination credentials – 19 involves some time and inconvenience. Find out if you can get a vaccination card through t u state, pharmacy or clinic where the vaccine was administered, or your electronic medical record system. Then find out what proof is required by businesses in your area, including activities like going to the movies, visiting a museum exhibit, or traveling. And keep in mind that today’s rules may change next week.
Air travel: Airlines must check the vaccination status of their Passengers for international routes and different airlines offer the option of their own digital verifications. American Airlines uses the application VeriFLY to get this list of countries and Delta offers Delta FlyReady . United has its Travel-Ready Center . But you can usually use your printed CDC card for travel, as I have done for the last half year with no problems.
The CDC guidelines for international travel begin with the following warning: “Do not travel abroad until fully vaccinated.”
Employer verification: If your employer asks you for proof of vaccination, he will detail what documents he accepts and how you should present them. Ford Motor Co., which recently announced a vaccination mandate for most of its workers, is collecting digital scans or photos of the CDC card, a spokeswoman said. Federal workers can file a wider variety of documents .
Facilities: As highlighted throughout this article, different museums , concert halls and other venues have different rules and can sometimes be enforced by local rules in cities like New York or Los Angeles. For example, Getty Villa Museum and Getty Center in the Los Angeles area require proof of vaccination or negative test and advance reservations ; Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland does not require proof of vaccination, but requires advance purchase of tickets online . The buildings of Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historical Park in Atlanta is temporarily closed due to COVID – 19.
“At this point it is important that people research their destinations well in advance to see what kind of they will ask for proof, ”says Pollak of the Commons Project. “We are looking at requirements ranging from CDC printed cards, CDC card images to requirements for specific applications or QR code formats.”
Your vaccination credentials are worth it because after two years of the onset of the pandemic, COVID – 15 disappears overnight.
“I think there will be a constant need for this for quite some time, as the pandemic is nowhere near over,” says Kaiser’s Michaud Family Foundation. “It could be something that we have to deal with here in the United States, at least for another year or so. And depending on the circumstances, maybe longer. ”
Consumer Reports is an independent, nonprofit organization that works side by side with consumers to create a fairer, safer, and healthier world . CR does not endorse products or services, and does not accept advertising. Copyright © 212752, Consumer Reports, Inc.
Consumer Reports has no financial relationship with advertisers on this site. Consumer Reports is an independent nonprofit organization that works with consumers to create a just, safe, and healthy world. CR does not endorse products or services and does not accept advertising. Copyright © 212752, Consumer Reports, Inc.