Govt begins distributing digital vaccine certificates

Health authorities have so far issued some 30,000 digital vaccine certificates as they embark on a national drive to meet the demands of those who are fully inoculated.

Joint Coordinator of the National Vaccination Programme Major David Clarke said on Thursday that before the Government had approved the distribution of the E-Seal Vaccine Certificates, some 80,000 people were on the waiting list.

“Everybody had been complaining they wanted theirs, but we had 80,000 people before the government approved us to send E-Seal Certificates. We have sent out about 30,000 of those. At present there are 113,000 to send out,” Major Clarke told Barbados TODAY, while adding that the blue vaccine cards are still in existence.

He said 62 people are working on the project and they are being sent out “slowly but surely”.

The vaccine programme senior official also made it clear that the digital certificates are not being printed and are sent by postal mail.

“If you didn’t put an email address in the system, you can’t get one. You use your blue card, or if you are travelling, you can use your E-Seal Certificate. If an email address is in the system and it is correct, you will receive an email from us eventually,” Major Clarke stated.

He explained that once the email is opened one would see an invitation to view the document signed by the Chief Medical Officer which must be downloaded and saved either on the desktop or some other safe place. The official also said the recipient should click on “agree” which appears on the document as one scrolls down.

He also suggested that as a backup, the digital certificate should be printed.

Major Clarke also had a special message for all those who are issued with these certificates.

“If you only view and it doesn’t have the QR code, you have to actually download it, as most people are making the mistake…and you have to save it. If you delete it I would not be sending you another one. It costs about $5 each time we send one of those. So I would say, agree, download it, print a copy and then save it somewhere else,” he cautioned.

“The number of people that called and said they deleted it, I said this costs the government money every time I send one and if you delete it by accident, that is a waste of the government’s money.

Major Clarke also gave an update on the pending expiration of a batch of the AstraZeneca vaccines.

“We have two batches. One goes this month and the other up to the end of December. So we will be using the one that expires this month. We haven’t been using the one that expires in December,” he revealed.

He disclosed that about 10,000 doses of the AstraZeneca have already been administered.

“People have the other misunderstanding that if we say a vaccine expired, they think we don’t have any more vaccines. That batch expires, but it doesn’t mean we don’t have vaccines. What we are trying to do is to get more people to come before that batch expires so we can use them up,” Major Clarke urged.

“They also think that when we say the vaccine expired that we are going to give them expired vaccines. We are not going to give them expired vaccines. We have to dispose of them according to WHO. So we are not giving anybody expired vaccines, what we want is for people to come before they are expired,” he reiterated. (EJ)