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You’ve seen them on social media: healthcare workers pose with a small index card indicating that they received their COVID-19 vaccine. Their appearance as some sort of status symbol may seem grim: will society be divided into two levels, one of the vaccinated and card-holders and the other of the cardless?
Don’t worry about a pandemic dystopia just yet. We spoke with healthcare professionals and public health experts about the SARS-CoV-2 vaccination card that is distributed as part of the vaccination process. And they say it’s a much smaller piece of paper than it looks, and it’s not even a big deal if you lose it.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) explains on its website that after the first inoculation, vaccinees will either receive a card or a printout telling them which coronavirus vaccine they have received. Currently, two different vaccines have been approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA): one from Pfizer / BioNTech and one from Moderna. Both require two doses given as two separate injections for the vaccine to be fully effective. For the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine, patients receive the two doses three weeks apart; for the Moderna vaccine, the duration is four weeks.
This distinction is one of the main reasons the COVID-19 vaccine card is important, in that it tells you – and maybe your doctor or nurse – when you need to take your second dose.
“The vaccination record is a piece of paper that just says, for example, that you received the Pfizer vaccine, this is the lot number, this is the date you received it and this is the date you get your second dose, ”said Amesh Adalja, principal investigator at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. Adalja said it was nothing special. “It’s literally a fragile piece of paper,” he added. “It’s not like a credit card, it’s not laminated, and it’s just so that you have a record that you’ve been vaccinated.”
Adalja noted that after receiving a vaccination you always receive a print or card.
“But most people just throw it in the trash before they leave the doctor’s office,” he said.
But for a virus like the novel coronavirus, having this record can be important for things like travel or, possibly possibly, school enrollment. Indeed, getting vaccinated may possibly be a requirement to enter certain countries. So if you throw or lose the card, does that mean you are out of luck?
Not enough. Litjen Tan, director of strategy for the Action Coalition for Immunization, told Salon that there was no need to be concerned if this happened. Technically, the card is a second form of documentation for receiving the COVID-19 vaccine. The first form is electronic.
“If they show up and say, ‘I lost my car but got my first dose,’ the supplier who has been authorized to administer the COVID-19 vaccines will be able to look it up in the electronic system,” said Tan. . “That being said, I would obviously tell any patient who comes back for a second dose to call the provider and say, ‘I’m coming back to get my second dose, but I lost my card.’ “
Because of this, Tan said fraudulent cards shouldn’t be a problem. This is because for now, the card will not be needed for anything other than keeping up with your vaccination schedule at this time.
Still, in the future, it could be used for travel if you are traveling to a location that requires COVID-19 vaccination.
“For international travel it could be anything, but it will probably be a different type of card,” Adalja said. “You might see these for use as a way to avoid a quarantine or to avoid a test when you travel to another country.”
Adalja compared it to how some countries require proof of a yellow fever vaccine to get there.
Tan agreed, noting that while COVID-19 certificates are needed for travel in the future, they wouldn’t be these “flimsy” cards because they are too easy to fake.
Tan added that now is the time for policymakers to discuss how potential COVID-19 vaccination certificates could also be used to reopen the economy in the United States.
“I think we should think about how we might be able to make something like this operational in the future,” such as for business travel or increasing the capacity of small businesses, said M Tan.
But this is all “premature” thinking, Tan said. Right now, the goal is to get as many people vaccinated as possible.
“We are in the midst of a huge surge, and we only have about 10 million people vaccinated; we need to get more people vaccinated,” Tan said. “And then once we get to the point where we have maybe 40 percent of a community vaccinated, you might be able to work with that, as well as the vaccine certifications.
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