The Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) earlier announced that it will be launching the National Digital Vaccine Certificate (VaxCertPH) in September. However, the agency has since clarified that the service will first be rolled out for residents of Metro Manila and overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) next month. It is expected to be fully implemented by October.
According to DICT Undersecretary Emmanuel Caintic in the recent joint House committee hearing on VaxCertPH, “We will dry-run on NCR and specifically for OFWs po muna. Para lang po maperfect ‘yung (This is just to perfect the) processes, not the system.”
The VaxCertPH is a web portal and mobile app to issue COVID-19 vaccination certificates to fully vaccinated individuals. This was done in partnership with the Department of Health (DOH).
It will include the patient’s personal data, brand, and lot number of the vaccines as well as the place and date when the doses were administered. Additionally, it contains a QR code that can be used to match data in the Vaccination Information Management System (VIMS), the central database for all LGUs.
The rollout of the portal was initially scheduled on September 1 but the DICT delayed this for two or three weeks due to challenges. These include improving the readiness of data systems of LGUs, correcting mistakes in encoding data, and integrating all data sets.
Caintic also mentioned that the agency is working to include more rural health units online so the VIMS network will reach even the most far-flung of barangays. This is another challenge though because of either high interconnection costs or the bad or even non-existent internet signal.
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