A COVID-19 vaccine passport issued on PC-COVID app. — VNS Photo

HÀ NỘI — The health ministry started to issue vaccine passports on Friday (April 15) to the general public in line with its schedule.

Việt Nam has so far reached mutual recognition of vaccine passports with 19 countries: Japan, the US, the UK, Australia, India, Belarus, Cambodia, the Philippines, Palestine, Maldives, New Zealand, Sri Lanka, Egypt, Turkey, Singapore, Saint Lucia, the Republic of Korea, Iran and Malaysia.

The passport will be available on the national COVID-19 app PC COVID-19 (available on both iOS and Android systems) or Digital Health (Sổ sức khỏe điện tử) apps.

If people don’t have the apps, they can get their vaccine passports by accessing the health ministry's portal and filling in the necessary information: name, gender, ID number, date of last COVID-19 vaccination, and email address. They will then receive the passports by email.

The vaccine passports have 11 fields of information: name, date of birth, nationality, the targeted disease, doses of vaccines received, date of vaccination, lot number of the vaccine batch, type of vaccine, vaccine product received, the vaccine manufacturer, and a code for the certification.

Information on the targeted disease, vaccine, vaccine product or manufacturer will be compatible with the values provided in the World Health Organization’s "COVID-19 vaccine tracker and landscape" and the "Value sets for EU Digital COVID Certificates" issued by the European Union.

Data will be encoded into a QR code. The code will expire after 12 months. Following their expiry, people will be notified, and a new QR code will be created.

Vaccine passports have been rolled out as a trial from late March for those vaccinated against COVID-19 in Hà Nội’s three major hospitals: E, K and Bạch Mai.

In HCM City, vaccine passports have been trialled for those vaccinated at Gia An 115 General Hospital.

Việt Nam has administered nearly 209 million vaccine doses, with almost 100 per cent of people over 18 having received full two shots and over 51 per cent having received a booster shot.

In the group aged 12 to 17, a total of 99.9 per cent have received one shot, and 95.3 per cent have had full two shots.

Vaccination for children from 5 to 11 started on Thursday, and the children will also be granted vaccine passports like people in other age groups. — VNS