THE Department of Information, Communications and Technology (DICT) on Friday, September 24, 2021, launched VaxCertPH, the official Vaccination Certificate for fully vaccinated individuals against Covid-19 in the country.

Cebu City is the only local government unit (LGU) in the Visayas and one of the seven LGUs nationwide that participated in the nationwide simultaneous launching of the vaccination certificate on Friday.

DICT Project Director Antonio Padre said initially, the certificate can only be used by overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) who are scheduled and needed to go out of the country for employment.

The vaccination certificate is seen to be available for everyone in October 2021 to those who are already fully vaccinated.

Padre said fully vaccinated individuals first need to go to the website www.vaxcert.gov.ph and supply needed information for the generation of the certificate, including the date and venue of their first and second doses and their birthdates.

Fully vaccinated individuals can either download an electronic copy or have it printed. Currently, only Android smartphones can download the electronic copy, as they are still working on making it possible for IOS.

Padre said the DICT collaborated with the Department of Health and the Bureau of Quarantine for the launch of the VaxCertPH.

He said this is patterned to the World Health Organization-issued standards in August.

"Knowing the vaccination initiative of Cebu, the DICT is very proud that we have already the database for the printing of the individual vax certificate," he said.

Padre said some countries are asking for authentic vaccination certificate, which was the main reason why the DICT developed the vaccine certificate with quick response (QR) codes.

He said there is a security feature embedded in the QR code and regular QR code readers cannot read it.

"We developed a QR code reader that specifically reads the data embedded in the QR code," he said.

"It comes also with unique identifier issued automatically to those who have completed their jabs, either two jabs or one if they were lucky enough to get the Janssen vaccine," he added. (WBS)