Vax card issues

The yellow card issued by the Bureau of Quarantine (BOQ) appears to be the must-have vaccination certificate you would need to travel outside the country. Don’t be sure of it yet.

People have been posting on social media photos of their yellow cards or the International Certificate of Vaccination with the name of the World Health Organization (WHO) on it and issued by the BOQ. They believe it’s the card they need to travel to other countries.

The National Vaccination Operations Center has advised those who want to apply

for a yellow card to register for an appointment using the BOQ online booking system (boq.pisopay.com.ph). Departing Filipino workers, it said, can benefit from having the yellow card as vaccination cards issued by local government units (LGUs) are not accepted at their destination because these did not come from one sour ce.

Without the unified vaccine database, LGUs had come up with their own vaccination cards using their own designs and colors. But these are not accepted abroad.

The BOQ yellow card is meant to be a stopgap. Something that overseas Filipino workers can present at their destination. Foreign Secretary Teodoro Locsin said on Twitter last week that our vaccination cards are not honored in Hong Kong because these did not come from one source. The Department of Foreign Affairs is reportedly negotiating with Hong Kong authorities to recognize instead the yellow car d .

It is the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) that is assigned to set up the Certificate of Vaccination Record portal. The DICT said in a press release last week it is working with LGUs on the portal and mobile app for issuing vaccination certificates called the “VaxCertPH” which is based on WHO standards.

The WHO proposed the use of digital vaccination certificates to document a person’s vaccination status, as a mechanism through which a person’s Covid-19-related health data can be digitally documented via an electronic certificate

“for use in the continuity of care or as proof of vaccination for purposes other than health care,” the DICT said.

The VaxCertPH developed by DICT for the Department of Health (DOH) relies on data submitted by LGUs through the Vaccine Information Management System. Under Republic Act 11525, or the Covid-19 Vaccination Program Act of 2021, the DOH and DICT should issue digital vaccination cards with a uniform format that conforms with globally accepted standards.

It has been 18 months since the start of the pandemic and five months after the government started the vaccination program, yet we do not know the shape or look of the digital certificates. Countries that have them give out the certificates through a mobile app. No yellow card or printed card.

The DICT will have a huge backlog for the digital certificates as over 12 million Filipinos are now fully vaccinated. This issue on vaccination cards or digital certificates is another indication of the government’s delayed response.