As the country ramps up vaccination efforts to return to pre-pandemic life, people have once again begun to do things such as go to work and dine in at restaurants while continuing to consider the different safety protocols. However, while doing such activities, people have also noticed the need to bring a specific item that was not needed during life prior to the pandemic, a vaccine card.
What is a Vaccine Card?
A vaccine card is something given to people upon receiving their first or second COVID-19 vaccine dose. As the name suggests, it is a card about the same size as that of an index card which contains details such as the person’s full name, date of birth, patient number, and vaccination status.
At vaccination sites, people use it to indicate the date and place where one received their first and/or second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. At malls and other commercial locations, these cards are commonly used by officials to verify whether or not one has received their COVID-19 vaccine.
In an effort to convince more people to get vaccinated, a number of restaurants and food stalls are currently providing discounts and/or freebies to customers that are fully vaccinated by requesting their vaccine cards as proof.
Lack of Uniformity
In the Philippines, different people receive a different vaccine card design depending on where they get their vaccine dose/s. While such variety does not seem like an issue at first, it has caused significant difficulty to those traveling outside the country, especially the Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs).
On August 11, Hong Kong had announced that they would not be recognizing the vaccine cards of those coming from the Philippines as they are not "connected to a single source." This caused the delayed departure of over 3,000 OFWs that were scheduled to leave that same week.
Such raises huge concerns as most OFWs were forced to pause overseas work during the pandemic and instead, seek other jobs to earn money for their families. Now that the world is slowly opening up again, it is extremely important that OFWs are able to return to their jobs to ensure the future of their families and the country’s economy.
In line with this; however, Rep. Ronnie Ong of party-list Ang Probinsyano stated that the Hong Kong authorities are not fully to blame as there is no effective way to verify such cards when presented at immigration. “If swab test results can be altered, how much more these vaccination cards?” Rep. Ong stated.
Government’s Solution
In September, the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) plans to start issuing uniform digital vaccine certificates for the general public under a program called “VaxCertPh.” It will contain the same set of information as that of a vaccine card except for the fact that it will be fully digital.
According to DICT Undersecretary Manny Caintic, the system for it has already been built and they are now just waiting for local government units (LGUs) to complete the training for personnel who would accommodate those wanting a certificate.
Besides national vaccine certificates, city governments like those in Manila are also planning on issuing unified vaccine cards for all of their citizens.
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