Agencies asked to speed up issuance of vaccine passports

Vaccine passport form displayed on the PC COVID-19 App. — Photo courtesy of the Ministry of Health

HÀ NỘI — The Ministry of Health on Tuesday asked vaccination facilities and health agencies to quickly complete the database on people vaccinated against COVID-19 by the end of this month so that they could get the vaccine passport.

The ministry’s database contains details on millions of COVID-19 injections and the personal identification numbers of vaccinated people. However, the information has not been verified in the national database on population due to incorrect information about name or date of birth.

The ministry asked vaccination facilities and health agencies to review, correct and complete the database on COVID-19 vaccinations by April 30.

Heads of vaccination facilities are directly responsible if the slow update of the database affects the issuance of vaccine passports.    

Also on Tuesday, the ministry asked the People’s Committees of provinces and cities to complete information relating to COVID-19 vaccinations required by the national database on population.

The work must be completed by May 5, 2022.

The ministry also asked the People’s Committees of provinces and cities, units under the management of the ministry to submit a list of officials in charge of COVID-19 vaccinations so that the coordination on vaccinations and issuance of vaccine passports could be done smoothly.

The health ministry began to issue vaccine passports on April 15.

Việt Nam’s vaccine passport follows standards issued by WHO and the EU which are being applied by 62 nations. 

The passport will be available on the PC Covid-19 or Digital Health (Sổ sức khỏe điện tử) apps. If people don’t have the apps, they can get their passports by accessing the health ministry’s portal and filling in the necessary information. They will then receive the passports by email.

The passport template was revealed by the Ministry of Health in December last year, which has 11 fields of information: name, date of birth, nationality, targeted disease, doses of vaccines received, date of vaccination, lot number of the vaccine batch, type of vaccine, vaccine product received, the vaccine manufacturer, and a code for the certification.

So far Việt Nam has reached mutual recognition of vaccine passports with 19 countries, namely Japan, the US, the UK, Australia, India, Belarus, Cambodia, the Philippines, Palestine, Maldives, New Zealand, Sri Lanka, Egypt, Turkey, Singapore, Saint Lucia, the Republic of Korea, Iran and Malaysia. — VnExpress News