Metro Manila mayors gave their full support to the government’s issuance of a unified vaccination card or certificate for fully inoculated individuals.
Parañaque Mayor Edwin Olivarez said he and other local chief executives in the National Capital Region were closely coordinating with the Department of Information and Communications Technology for the project.
He added they were sending the official lists of inoculated individuals to DICT for the issuance of the unified vaccination certificate.
In Pasay City, Mayor Imelda Rubiano said earlier she favored the proposed unified vaccination card that could be used by fully inoculated individuals who need to travel outside Metro Manila.
The city government, according to Rubiano, had a database already linked to the DICT for the tracing and verification.
She said her administration was also using the QR code in the issuance of vaccination code through the mobile application pasay.emi.com, making the compilation of the list of vaccinated residents easier.
“You don’t have to write or type details of personal information. That’s the advantage of having the QR code,” said Rubiano. “All you have to do is to scan the QR code to determine the authenticity of the vaccination card.”
Under the Digital Documentation of COVID-19 Certificates: Vaccination Status — Technical Specifications and Implementation Guidance issued on 27 July 2021, the World Health Organization proposed the use of digital vaccination certificates, which documents a person’s current vaccination status, as a mechanism through which a person’s COVID-19-related health data can be digitally documented via an electronic certificate for use in continuity of care or as proof of vaccination for purposes other than health care.
The Philippines’ “VaxCertPH” developed by the DICT for the Department of Health relies on the data submitted by LGUs through the Vaccine Information Management System (VIMS). Thus, VaxCertPH is highly reliant on the quality of data collected in the VIMS.
“For the system to effectively work, we need data from the LGUs that are complete, accurate, and compliant with the prescribed format for uploading to the system. If we have this, then we can expect both the portal and the mobile app to produce the desired results,” said DICT Secretary Gregorio Honasan II.