Digital COVID-19 jab database a relief

-for all kinds of need.  After the standard passport, the vaccination certificate especially for those in upper middle age will be a requirement for all sorts of travel, and indeed for all except school children if they are thinking of travelling outside.  It is the latest addition to what usually makes elements of personal identity, biodata.

The Health ministry Permanent Secretary, Prof Abel Makubi, said in a statement on progress in the vaccination drive at the weekend that digital copies of the Covid-19 vaccination certificates will be internationally recognizable. This is another step in the programme set out by President Samia Suluhu Hassan upon taking office, namely the need to brush up the country’s image globally by moving into step with international requirements of the managing of the pandemic. The first step was admitting it was there, then to reintroduce specific policy on prevention and roll out mass vaccination drive; now it’s here.

What though is salutary at this stage isn’t firstly the number of people vaccinated – though this lowers the pressure significantly as it stops a whole range of individuals from being easy carriers and transmission agents of the virus. What is laudable is to make the progress attained easy to ascertain, and since this is an aspect of identification, not really different from biodata, as vaccination status is pivotal to one’s potential exposure in a Covid-19 atmosphere is something that should be handy when needed. It is this assurance that the ministry is now projecting, thankfully not piled up with the wider national identification paralysis.

The ministry’s top medical officer similarly cautioned about taking stern legal steps against all those found to obtain such certificates fraudulently. It would appear from this worry that those who are often vocal about vaccination would outwardly wish to be recognized as vaccinated, and with the manual forms and certificates – or cards – issued chaotically all over the country, our ‘vaccine passports’ would soon start being rejected around the world’s airports. They would have to take own tests to ascertain the presence of vaccine input, which is altogether different from testing the presence of Covid-19 particles.

It is definitely true that the ministry at present has records on the number sequence of people who took the jab and at which centre, in which case writing a fake certificate requires repeating a number, on the basis of the top medic’s observation. The idea that such a number repeat would be sorted out by conducting an investigation from the vaccination staff and those with any such identical certificates is valid if those cases are few and far between. But if as it threatens to be the case some people especially in the ministry start looking for easy cash that way, such a method can’t work. It would be easier to lodge the data with the local offices of the World Health Organisation (WHO) ‘where neither thief nor moth doth destroy.’ That way everyone would have to vaccinate as no trade in vaccine certificates would start; better prevent it than try to cure it, and shaming the country in the process. A stitch in time saves nine, as they often say.