There are about 330 million people in the USA, and only a small portion received the COVID-19 vaccination, about 1 in every 30. Those fortunate people can show a vaccination paper whenever needed. It is about to alter faster than you may expect.
According to The New York Times, the tech and health companies announced on January 14th their alliance to develop an app that will replace vaccination paper and ease sharing immunization status.
Salesforce, Oracle, Microsoft, and the Mayo Clinic are building an app, referred to as “vaccine passport app,” to simplify providing immunization information for business, journey, or other purposes.
Common Pass, utilized by United Airlines and JetBlue, is a similar application. Customers can use it to confirm that they have been tested for the COVID-19 recently, and the results are negative. After that, companies let them board on the plane.
The coalition called released a statement about the Vaccination Credential Initiative (VCI). They assert that the aim of launching the VCI is to provide a “trustworthy, traceable, verifiable, and universally recognized digital record of vaccination status.” The release continued with the statement that a digital record “is urgently needed worldwide to enable people to return to work safely, school, events, and travel.”
VCI aims to provide encrypted digital copies of immunization records to the respective owners. You don’t have to worry if you don’t have a smartphone but have a feature phone or don’t have a phone at all. With VCI, you will get a QR code printed on paper with all the relevant information.
Currently, CDC, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, requires that papers about the COVID-19 have this info: the vaccine manufacturer, batch number, and date of immunization. However, on the internet, we lack a federal system to access required vaccination records easily.
Mike Sicilia, executive VP of Oracle’s Global Business Units, noted that we are improving the pandemic situation. There is a need for electronic info about the vaccination and other medical records that are easily accessible to resume traveling.
