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VACCINE

CovPass: Here’s how Germany’s new digital vaccination pass will work

Some people getting a Covid vaccine in Germany might also receive a digital pass as part of a pilot project. Here's how it works.

Published: 27 May 2021 18:03 CEST
Updated: 28 May 2021 09:13 CEST
CovPass: Here's how Germany's new digital vaccination pass will work
The digital vaccination pass. Photo: picture alliance/dpa/dpa-Zentralbild-Pool | Soeren Stache

Selected vaccination centres are giving out the digital certificate, known as the ‘CovPass’ – along with the paper version – to monitor how it works ahead of the nationwide rollout.

“We want to see how the processes work,” said Gottfried Ludewig, department head in the Health Ministry, during a visit to the Potsdam vaccination centre on Thursday. “Does it work technically? Does it also work in the system?”

The centre is part of the nationwide field trial to test the digital vaccination pass, reported the Tagesschau on Thursday. 

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Doctor Christoph Borch at a vaccination centre in Potsdam with a version of the digital vaccine pass. Photo: picture alliance/dpa/dpa-Zentralbild-Pool | Soeren Stache

At the beginning of the year, the European Commission agreed that countries would launch a digital health record – now called the EU Digital Covid Certificate.

The EU hopes the certificates, which they say are not strictly “vaccine passports”, will make travel easier and safer, and boost the economies of tourism-dependent nations.

Member states, including Germany, are implementing their own systems for how residents can upload their vaccine certificate or Covid-19 health status onto a digital platform.

Results of Covid-19 tests or proof of recovery from coronavirus can also be stored on the CovPass app.

Health Minister Jens Spahn has said the digital pass will be offered in Germany by the end of June.

Ludewig assured that the introduction of the digital certificate was on schedule.

How does it work?

People who have been vaccinated should receive a piece of paper with a code which they scan onto their smartphone and onto an app. They will receive the certificate from the vaccinating doctor or centre.

Those who have already had their jab should also receive the certificate from their GP or vaccination centre, authorities say.

Alternatively, they can get digital evidence from pharmacies or doctors’ surgeries by presenting their analog vaccination certificate.

But after the introduction of the CovPass, the paper vaccination certificate – such as the well-known ‘yellow vaccine booklet’ – remains valid.

People who are travelling in the EU (this may also be extended to some non-EU countries) but do not want to provide proof of their vaccine status via an app can, alternatively, carry the printed code with them.

READ ALSO: Jabs for children and digital passports: What can we expect from Germany’s vaccine summit?

‘No bureaucratic monster’

Ludewig countered fears that the procedure could see people use forged vaccination cards to turn them into valid digital certificates.

He said yellow vaccination booklets can be checked for forgery by pharmacies and GPs.

Board member of the Brandenburg Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians, Holger Rostek, said he was delighted with the start of the field tests.

“The vaccination certificate must be practical and also work in general practitioners’ practices,” said Rostek. “We want to vaccinate and not have a bureaucratic monster.”

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VACCINE

Vaccine scramble: How Spaniards want Covid jabs more than other Europeans

Whilst the EU warns that unused doses due to vaccine scepticism are piling up, Spaniards of all ages want to achieve immunity against Covid-19 as soon as possible, the data shows. 

Published: 12 July 2021 10:38 CEST
Vaccine scramble: How Spaniards want Covid jabs more than other Europeans
People queue to get the vaccine in Barcelona. Photo: Lluis Gené/AFP

In Spain, where the Covid-19 rollout has gone from one of the slowest in the EU to currently one of the fastest, pretty much everyone wants to get vaccinated. 

With priority groups almost fully immunised, Spain is still beating daily records with 600,000 to 700,000 doses administered every day. 

The spike in cases among the country’s young population has led several regions to bring forward jabs for teens and twenty-somethings ahead of people in their thirties.

Despite the apparent lack of concern for the pandemic witnessed  in packed squares and streets over the past weeks, young people who have been able to take advantage of the vaccine offer have headed en masse to the vaccination centres. 

When an Asturian youth called Ana Santos told a local newspaper that “after the elderly, it should be our turn to get vaccinated as it’s not as if people in their forties go out, is it?”, her comments went down like a tonne of bricks among this age group, who demanded it was their turn to reach full immunisation first. 

Vaccine scepticism hasn’t been a problem for Spain as it has been for other countries, with President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen launching a warning recently that vaccine supplies are piling up, even though Brussels has reached its target of providing enough doses to fully vaccinate 70 percent of EU adults.

“If we look at the statistics, more and more doses remain unused,” von der Leyen told journalists in Strasbourg.

“This is linked to the fact that there is a greater distribution of vaccines, but in part also due to doubts about vaccination,” adding that it was crucial to reach the most sceptical parts of the population” in the face of the “worrying” presence of the Delta variant.

“Traditionally in Spain, we have had much less resistance or rejection towards vaccines, that’s always been the case,” vaccine expert at the Spanish Association of Pediatrics (AEP) Ángel Hernández-Merino told 20minutos. 

“In any vaccination programme, it’s vital to count on the population being willing to accept the vaccination”.

A June 2021 Eurobarometer study found that 49 percent of people in Spain want to get vaccinated “as soon as possible”, the highest rate in the entire EU (32 percent EU average). 

Whereas an average of 9 percent of EU citizens don’t ever want to get vaccinated, the rate in Spain is 4 percent.  Around 63 percent of Spaniards told Eurobarometer that they couldn’t understand why people are hesitant to get vaccinated and 71 percent said Covid vaccines are the only way for the pandemic to end. 

In Belgium, around a third of the population doesn’t want to get vaccinated.

In other countries where in the earlier stages of the Covid vaccination campaign it seemed  that available doses were easily used up it’s now becoming evident that sprinting through the age groups doesn’t guarantee that everyone is being vaccinated. 

Germany, the UK and the US, all seen as examples to Spain of how to quickly immunise a population, have all seen their campaigns slow down due to hesitancy and the summer holidays.

Spain’s Health Ministry doesn’t give data on how many people have rejected the vaccine and why, but stats do show that already more than half of the population (57.5 percent) have at least one dose and 43.3 percent are fully vaccinated. 

The Spanish government has stuck to its objective of vaccinating 70 percent of the country’s 47 million people before the end of August, even though it did fall short of its June target by more than half a million doses. 

Rather than vaccine scepticism, what’s been holding up Spain’s inoculation campaign have been doubts over the administration of second AstraZeneca vaccines and the decision to keep a reserve in case the country experienced delivery setbacks as it has in the past, with 2.9 million doses in storage reported in late June.

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