The idea of a “vaccine passport,” which would prove to people that it was inoculated against Covid, has been swept away in a political debate over personal freedom. But this misunderstands how these applications are likely to be used. Passports would allow consumers by giving them more control over their own health information.
Millions of Americans now have tokens stating their vaccine batches and dates. But your doctor and your health plan do not necessarily have this information. The card could be lost and is easy to forge. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention requires states to maintain databases as a condition of vaccine shipments. But there are more than 60 separate systems: some large states like Texas have a few and New York City has theirs. The registration system uses an existing agreement for child immunization programs: it was created years ago for pediatricians to ask these sites for records that a child has been vaccinated.
The federal government needed to establish a registration system quickly, before the country could reach a consensus on how consumers should store this information. Instead, states were asked to work from the existing system without any obvious consumer access plan; the priority was to receive gunshots.
In some cases, health plans are notified that you have received a vaccine, at least if you want to offer the insurance card when you are vaccinated. But that doesn’t help the millions of people who are uninsured or shot at a mass vaccination site or other non-standard place, such as an optometrist’s office.
As a result, there is no easy way to prove that you have been vaccinated. You will need cryptographically signed data that cannot be easily falsified: a digital card that will allow you to retrieve and store test and vaccine information securely and verifiably, using an app or QR code.