Errors affect up to 700,000 jab ‘passports’
NHS Digital records show wrong data inputted at jab centres leaving people unable to travel abroad
Up to 700,000 vaccine passports have been affected by NHS blunders – locking many people out of foreign travel – after the wrong data was recorded by health officials. Ministers have said Covid passes – already used for travel – will become compulsory for entry to nightclubs and large venues by the end of next month. But hundreds of thousands have now been found to contain errors, including those which have left the doublejabbed without the proof they need.
UP TO 700,000 vaccine passports have been affected by NHS blunders – locking many out of foreign travel – after the wrong data was recorded by health officials, The Daily Telegraph can reveal.
Ministers have said Covid passes – already used for travel to dozens of countries – will become compulsory for entry to nightclubs and large venues by the end of next month.
But hundreds of thousands of vaccine records have now been found to contain errors, including those which have left the double-jabbed without the proof they need. The blunders mean families are unable to go on holiday, or visit loved ones abroad – with some resorting to having a third jab, after desperate calls failed to resolve the matter.
Freedom of Information disclosures now reveal 677,331 cases in which NHS Covid vaccine records have had to be corrected.
In addition, health officials admitted to 112,939 cases in which records had had to be deleted, because of corrections, or where duplicate entries had been found. Experts said the figures from NHS Digital are likely to be the tip of the iceberg, with many errors only coming to light when holidaymakers checked the NHS app, and found their pass was missing.
The NHS is about to launch a Vaccination Data Resolution Service to deal with the growing crisis. A job advertisement for call agents says the seven-day service will “support citizens resolving problems they encounter with their Covid-19 vaccination records” and be essential “in enabling citizens to to prove their Covid-19 vaccination status in line with UK Government guidance”.
The number signing up for the NHS app has more than doubled since the pass was added in May, with latest figures showing 10.4 million users signed up, an increase from four million before the vaccination status service was introduced.
But most people have yet to sign up to the app – which is separate to the NHS Covid-19 app – a situation which is expected to change if compulsory vaccine passports are introduced for domestic use.
The controversial plan for passports for nightclubs already appears in disarray, with No10 insisting it will go ahead, despite the emergence of a leaked letter from Government lawyers last week which stated that “no final policy decision” has been taken.
More than 30 countries now recognise the NHS Covid pass as proof of their vaccination status.
But last month investigations by The Daily Telegraph uncovered hundreds of cases where people have been locked out of the vaccine passport system, because vaccine centres had recorded the wrong data.
Experts said that most commonly, the problems resulted from human error, when the wrong information was recorded at vaccination centres.
NHS Digital said the 677,331 updates to the Covid vaccine records between the start of the rollout and Aug 15 would not all have impacted whether or not a citizen received a Covid pass.
An NHS spokesperson said: “The vast majority of updates made to vaccination records by NHS Digital do not relate to people’s vaccine status. The NHS is proactively contacting people who have been vaccinated in England and are showing an incomplete record so their records can be urgently corrected.”