Difficulties in issuing vaccine passports

Many citizens have not been granted

Recently, before going to work abroad, Mr. NVĐ in Hung Nguyen district checked information aboutvaccine passportthrough 2 smartphone applications: Electronic Health Book and PC-Covid. However, both applications reported that his information was not available in the vaccine passport system.

Vaccine passports facilitate citizens to travel and work abroad. Photo: Document

Mr. NVĐ said: “The country I am going to and the company that takes me there all require a vaccine passport to enter the country. I went to the health station where I live and where I got vaccinated to ask. At the station, I was also helped by medical staff and asked to wait to be issued… I am very worried that because of the vaccine passport, I will miss this trip.”

At this time, most countries in the world have reopened after a long period of "lockdown" due to the Covid-19 pandemic. This is an opportunity for many Vietnamese people to travel and export labor. There are quite a few countries that have opened freely, but there are also many countries that require entrants to have a vaccine passport, especially some Asian countries. According to companies that send people to export labor: Some countries that require entrants to have a vaccine passport are Singapore, Taiwan...

To ensure the right of people to be granted vaccination certificates and vaccine passports when participating in Covid-19 vaccination, creating the most favorable conditions for citizens who need to go abroad, from April 15, the Ministry of Health has started to issue electronic vaccine passports to people. The passport includes 11 information fields, packaged in the form of a 2D QR code, displayed on the PC-Covid application or electronic health book. Vaccine passports are issued free of charge by authorities to all people... As of May 23, 19 million people nationwide have been issued vaccine passports.

Many people have yet to be issued vaccine passports. Photo: Thanh Chung

Thus, it can be seen that not only Mr. NVĐ but also many people have not been issued a vaccine passport. Upon investigation, it was found that the work of issuing vaccine passports is facing many difficulties. Some medical staff said: Previously, the requirement to fight the epidemic required us to speed up the vaccination progress. Therefore, during the vaccination process, the declaration and updating of information such as phone number, address, ID card number, citizen identification of the people still had many errors and omissions. The amount of missing and incorrect information is very large, it takes time to verify and clean the data... In addition, there are other difficulties such as the unsynchronized machine system; the person creating the data is not specialized; the connection of data is difficult; the Covid-19 vaccination management system is congested and slow.

In the past time, Nghe An province has made many efforts to issue vaccine passports to citizens. As of May 23, the whole province had 5,846 million injections verified and pushed to the vaccination system and 1,683 million records signed to confirm vaccine passports (accounting for 29%). Of the 4,163 million injections that have not been signed to confirm the issuance of vaccine passports, 144,888 injections have not been injected or pushed to the system; 57,193 injections do not have citizen identification/identification codes; 21,060 injections have incorrect citizen identification/identification codes; 363,027 injections have incorrect information verification...

Difficult, behind schedule

In 21 districts, towns and cities, 3 localities have not signed to confirm the issuance of vaccine passports, 01 locality has only signed 87 doses. Talking with these localities, it was said: The reason for the delay in signing the confirmation is that some medical stations do not have digital signatures; coordination between medical units and local police, and suppliers is not good; some localities have not really directed strongly, mobilized the participation of all levels and sectors; reviewing, cleaning, and supplementing data requires careful work, otherwise once it is pushed to the system, it is very difficult to find errors... In addition, medical staff also face difficulties when verifying information when people are afraid that providing information and citizen identification numbers will be exploited by criminals.

The passport includes 11 information fields, packaged in the form of a 2D QR code. Photo: Thanh Chung

According to information from the Nghe An Department of Health, the process of signing and confirming vaccine passports still encounters some problems from the system such as: When the list is pushed up but cannot be signed, or only a few cases can be signed; when selecting 500 cases to sign, an error is reported, not knowing which case the error is, the staff has to check and sign each case again; digital signatures are sometimes not recognized; the software to sign and confirm is still slow, data freezes, and cannot sign and confirm... After implementing information verification and data cleaning, vaccination facilities update and synchronize data between the vaccination software and the national population database, but the data still reports errors; currently, it is not possible to sign and confirm on the same day because it still has to be synchronized with the National Population Data.

With a large volume of records while the machinery and software systems are not synchronized. Without specialized IT human resources, ensuring progress for Nghe An is difficult to achieve. Pharmacist Tran Minh Tue - Deputy Director of Nghe An Department of Health said: The Ministry of Health requires localities to complete data cleaning before June 1. The remaining time is very short while the number of injections that have not been signed to confirm the issuance of vaccine passports is still very large... However, the health sector and related sectors and localities are still trying to implement to ensure the rights of the people.

The Covid-19 vaccination management system and confirmation signing are operating very slowly. Photo: Thanh Chung

Nghe An Department of Health requires vaccination units to focus on retrieving detailed data to make a list of Covid-19 vaccination subjects at the vaccination site, filter the list by commune/ward and send it directly to the commune/ward police for verification. After having a list of verified subjects, continue to edit and clean the data on the system. Vaccination facilities must daily check and sign the vaccine passport; digitally sign all vaccination subjects whose information has been verified correctly. Request software providers to coordinate and support units in implementing the contents of data cleaning and signing the vaccine passport... All relevant organizations/individuals must not make it difficult for people to issue Covid-19 vaccination certificates and confirm vaccine passports; if negative manifestations occur, they must take full responsibility before the law./.

The electronic vaccine passport is an electronic Covid-19 vaccination certificate signed and confirmed by vaccination facilities and the Ministry of Health based on the people's Covid-19 vaccination information. The QR code of the vaccine passport is valid for 12 months from the date of digital confirmation by the Ministry of Health. When the code expires, people will be notified and automatically generate a new QR code for use.

The vaccine passport will be displayed on the electronic health book application, PC-Covid. If there is any error/missing information, people are requested to contact (directly or report on the Covid-19 vaccination information portal https://tiemchungcovid19.gov.vn) the vaccination facility for supplementation and update.