Viet Nam starts issuing vaccine passport

The vaccine passport comprises information such as name, date of birth, the disease which they're vaccinated against, the number of shots and their vaccination dates.

The vaccine passport is used in conjunction with other personal identification documents like ID cards. Data that identify people will not be encoded into QR codes for security reasons.

The vaccine passport's QR code will expire after 12 months. Following their expiry, holders of vaccine passport will be notified and a new QR code will be created instead.

So far, Viet Nam has attained mutually recognised COVID-19 vaccine passports with 19 countries namely Malaysia, Iran, the United States, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Australia, Belarus, India, Cambodia, the Philippines, Maldives, Palestine, Turkey, Egypt, Sri Lanka, New Zealand, Singapore, and Saint Lucia.

The ministry also reported that over 209 million doses of vaccines had been administered in Viet Nam, with almost all adults have received their second doses and 51 percent their third.

A total 99.0 percent of children aged 12 to under 19 have received their first vaccine shots, and 95.3 percent got their second. 

Children aged 5 to under 12 are being vaccinated against COVID-19 in this month.

The issuance of the vaccine passports is applied uniformly across vaccination sites in the country, following three-step procedures.

First, vaccination sites are asked to review and verify the information of people to whom they have administered vaccines.

Second, vaccination sites will conduct ‘digital signing’ of vaccination records on the national platform for COVID-19 vaccination management used by health authorities, which will share its data with the management system for certification of vaccinations against COVID-19.

Third, the Department of Preventive Medicine (Ministry of Health) digitally signs the COVID-19 vaccine certificates. The certificates are then issued using QR codes in accordance with EU regulatory standards.