Los Angeles County residents who receive a COVID-19 vaccination can add a digital record of their vaccination to the Apple Wallet app, reports Bloomberg.
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The province is working with Healthvana to add the vaccination certificate to the Wallet app on the iPhone. Healthvana is a patient platform that healthcare providers can use to provide COVID-19 test results to patients.
The vaccination record helps ensure that those vaccinated get their second injection in the two-dose procedure, and in the future, Bloomberg speculates it could be used as proof of vaccination to access flights, concerts and more.
For now, the Wallet vaccination record is warning people who have had their first shot before their second appointment to make sure every person is fully vaccinated.
“We’re really concerned. We really want people to come back for that second dose,” said Claire Jarashow, director of vaccination against disease in LA. Bloomberg. “We just don’t have the capacity to make hundreds of medical record requests to find people’s first doses and when they need their second.”
Immunizations are also kept in records and the vaccinees are given a paper card, but that card is easily lost, so the Wallet app serves as more permanent evidence.
The province plans to send data to Healthvana every night, with information stored on Amazon Web Services’ HIPAA-compliant servers. Jarashow told me Bloomberg that it is “as safe as we can make it”, and she would “feel comfortable” with it.
By December 22, Los Angeles had administered at least 38,850 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine to health care providers, residents of long-term care facilities, and paramedics.
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