Which countries will now accept the NHS covid vaccination app?

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• Jan M says:

  31 Oct31 October 06:51

  As someone vaccinated in the EU and living in Wales, some reciprocity would be good. An EU Covid pass won’t get you into a Welsh nightclub or music event. No desire to visit either but if they expand the use of such passes I’ll be in a real pickle. (They’ve added the vaccinations to my NHS record but they still won’t officially recognise them.)

  • Peter says:

    31 Oct31 October 07:10

    Test and Trace will not recognise your vaccinations as they were not given by the NHS. If traced you still have to isolate for 10 days despite being fully vaccinated.
    US and Canadian administered vaccinations are similarly ignored by Test and Trace despite being acceptable for quarantine free immigration.

  • John says:

    31 Oct31 October 08:21

    https://gov.wales/use-nhs-covid-pass-attend-large-events-and-venues seems to say that a valid foreign vaccination proof should be accepted, so if nightclubs don’t that’s down to them (and tough luck until they work out a real solution)

  • Freddy says:

    31 Oct31 October 11:05

    I suspect alot of people living in Wales will be popping across the border into England for hospitality purposes if it is expanded further

• Duncan Stevenson-Price says:

  31 Oct31 October 06:57

  Any idea if the Scottish app will work in the same way? We’re going to Vienna in a couple of weeks and I’m still unsure what we’ll need as double vaccinated folks.

  I tried adding my COVID certificate to the French app and it was happy, but I used a verifier (I think Portugals one) and it said that the code was invalid.

  • Duncan Stevenson-Price says:

    31 Oct31 October 07:45

    I just realised I can largely test this myself. The certificate verifier apps for France, Portugal, and Switzerland all show “Valid” for the second dose QR code in the Scottish app. Looks good!

    • Alun says:

      31 Oct31 October 16:08

      Works unlike England and Wales from testing a bing of family members today

  • Matthew says:

    31 Oct31 October 08:19

    I was in Vienna this week. Checking of vaccine status was patchy – about 75% of places asked. Those who did were all entirely happy with a cursory glance at either a paper copy or a pdf. No scanning took place whatsoever.

    • Duncan Stevenson-Price says:

      31 Oct31 October 08:58

      Oh that’s helpful, thanks! Anything else you think it would be helpful to know about visiting Vienna at the moment?

      • Matthew says:

        31 Oct31 October 11:56

        My only observation would be to make sure you have FFP2/N95 masks with you, they’re the standard across the country and I don’t think I saw anyone wearing anything else.

    • Anthony says:

      31 Oct31 October 08:59

      I’m in Vienna now and have been asked everywhere we have gone to eat. The bit we didn’t know is that the kids (6 and 9) need to show a recent negative lateral flow test as they can’t be vaccinated. We got ours done at a chemist for 25 euros each (certificate emailed through in 20 mins) although we were told there are official places that will do it for free for tourists too.

    • Paul says:

      31 Oct31 October 17:06

      75% is 75% more than anything being done here

  • ktk says:

    31 Oct31 October 09:55

    Scottish travellers. Get the French app ‘TousAntiCovid’ from any app store – used it in Nice for 10 days earlier this month, no problems. Scan in ONLY the 2nd dose vaccine QR code from the Scottish vaccine certificate pdf or paper version. It’s recognised right away as EU valid, and appears in the app with a UK and EU flag beneath the the QR code. Save it to the wallet in the app. (You can also scan in and save multiple certs in the one app, if it makes it easier when travelling with family for example.) It also produces two version of the cert – one for everyday use and one for crossing EU borders. (The app also fully converts to the French language version if you change it in the ‘settings’.)

    • BlueThroughCrimp says:

      31 Oct31 October 17:39

      Thanks. Done just that, and it works first time, unlike the Danish, err Scottish junk app.
      That, and the paper version will do me.

  • ktk says:

    31 Oct31 October 09:57

    PS. A Scottish app is ‘supposed’ to be available from mid November.
    Don’t hold your breath, tho’

    • Stephen Reid says:

      31 Oct31 October 11:53

      The Scottish App has been out for weeks, I’ve got it on my phone with all my vaccine info. I’m not going abroad any time soon so can’t comment on that.

• Emran says:

  31 Oct31 October 07:12

  The Netherlands was not ready when this went live Friday, was still giving Red invalid screen. This was resolved on Saturday and is now working.

  • Jk says:

    31 Oct31 October 08:44

    Thanks good to know. They’ve been really strict, and the daily testing solution was hard work.

    • Gavin says:

      31 Oct31 October 09:23

      As someone on the final day of a trip in Rotterdam, this is great to know.

      Had to test Friday morning, and again Saturday morning, to buy 24 hours of access to restaurants and bars each time.

• Gothbe says:

  31 Oct31 October 07:25

  Am I being simplistic but wouldn’t it have been A lot simpler and cheaper if we had used the European version from the start? Instead we come up with three versions England, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

  • Mike says:

    31 Oct31 October 07:58

    As far as EU goes, the answer is no, think of it as lots of individual systems that have agreed interoperability, you still need your own system. There wasn’t an off-the-shelf EU system. On Scotland, NI, England; they have their own IT solutions for day-to-day operations that the vaccine programme hung off, therefore different projects.

  • VerdantBacon says:

    31 Oct31 October 08:42

    There is no “EU system” every country has its own app and process. They just agreed from the outset to recognise each other’s certificates. They didn’t develop a singular EU app

    • Quark999 says:

      31 Oct31 October 09:03

      There IS an EU system, I don’t know why everyone goes around claiming that there are “a lot of different systems”: https://github.com/eu-digital-green-certificates

      And as far as I know the UK pass was developed to exactly the same specifications (thankfully), which is how I was able to scan my NHS pass into the German app long before any interoperability was announced. All it needed was for the apps to trust the UK signing authorities, and they only introduced the checks in the apps much later anyway.

      What IS different is the way the entitlement for a certificate is managed and how you get one (vaccination, prior infection, which authority), but the certificates themselves all follow the same standard.

      • Anuj says:

        31 Oct31 October 09:31

        Finally the correct answer. Idk why people claim stuff they don’t know about

        • Mike says:

          31 Oct31 October 10:13

          Well, no. The UK didn’t reconfigure the entire of the England’s backend NHS processes to allow the COVID certificates. The backend was leveraged, NHS number etc. What was agreed was interoperability, the GitHub above is the spec for COVID bit only and that’s what was said. Just look at the architecture diagrams. What is this obsession that everything the EU is holy writ, to be worshipped.

  • Mike says:

    31 Oct31 October 10:41

    The EU part was just the front-end bits giving interoperability. This is easily proven as the NHS App recorded COVID jabs before it had the pass capability grafted on. It showed them under the prescriptions. The EU bit is just an agreed standard and example code to implement.

• meta says:

  31 Oct31 October 07:42

  You can just about find any study to support pretty much any argument you want to make (either for or against!). Usually these studies are not even being reported on or under much scrutiny, but because covid now every single one is under the microscope. The fact remains that we still known little about covid and especially its long term effects, vaccines, etc. We do know much more than 2 years ago, but not enough. Hence why we still have some measures.

  • meta says:

    31 Oct31 October 07:43

    That was for @IanM on page 1

    • Yuff says:

      31 Oct31 October 07:48

      Covid statistics are like accountants, they can show what you want.
      Enron was in good financial shape before it went bankrupt.
      Vaccine protection has helped massively in opening up the world and boosters will do the same. Lockdowns don’t work they just prolong the situation to,the detriment of everything else. Just look at Australia they could not keep Delta out and realise vaccination is the way forward.
      I have no problem showing my pass anywhere and don’t understand why others do unless of course you haven’t had the jab.

      • Ian M says:

        31 Oct31 October 08:00

        It’s not just a case of showing your pass, but it will also mean another jab every 6 months of course.

        But your last point is exactly the point. Covid Vaccine Passports discriminate against those that, for whatever reason, are not vaccinated.

        To discriminate against people in that way, banning them from parts of society, shouldn’t we all demand that there be VERY clear scientific data, that shows that it is necessary to prevent great harm?

        But that’s not the case. It’s very far from the case!

        • Luke says:

          31 Oct31 October 08:08

          In the context of a time of great emergency and peril, well no I don’t think we should.

        • Yuff says:

          31 Oct31 October 08:18

          If people want to believe all the cr4p that’s posted on twitter and Facebook, sorry meta( not you above meta 😀) fine just don’t endanger other people because of their choice, don’t expect the majority to be sympathetic to people who prolong the pandemic and are anti a passport which makes everyone safer.

        • meta says:

          31 Oct31 October 08:32

          Most EU countries are issuing covid certificate to those who can’t get vaccinated for health reasons (just says completed or similar without mentioning of doses). However, these people are so ill that they probably don’t go out to restaurants, concerts, shopping centres, etc. Others have no barriers to get vaccinated.

          Religious beliefs is also not the reason given that major religious authorities have called for people to get vaccinated. A few that actually are actually against it are so secluded from society that they wouldn’t even go to place where you would need a passport. This is a totally false argument.

        • Martin says:

          31 Oct31 October 11:31

          I agree totally with no covid passport, no entry approach..

          As far as apps go we just printed ours off, never had a problem with good old paper covid vaccination proof all over Europe this summer

        • Paul says:

          31 Oct31 October 17:19

          If smallpox returned you can bet that discrimination would be enforced. And rightly!
          As for covid, I am perfectly content to share a venue, workplace or anywhere else with those who cannot be vaccinated and who consequently test regularly and have those test scrutinised and checked!
          If however you choose not to be vaccinated then society has the right to exclude you. This is a public health catastrophe and it impact is widespread affecting other medical needs.
          Seat belts were made mandatory to save lives yet we are accepting 9000 hospital beds being occupied and 150 dead each day! It’s perverse

  • Rui N. says:

    31 Oct31 October 07:48

    Hear hear. Amazing people find that to hard to understand.

    • Yuff says:

      31 Oct31 October 08:22

      Those who have a genuine medical reason for not having a vaccine should not be discriminated against. Those who believe that Bill Gates is tracking them …….need I say more

      • Ian M says:

        31 Oct31 October 08:26

        Yuff, I think you’ll find there’s a lot of other people in between

        • Yuff says:

          31 Oct31 October 08:34

          79.4% of over 12s have had 2 doses
          In terms of number of people maybe but in terms of percentages they are a tiny minority …………..but are the loudest……..surprise surprise

        • meta says:

          31 Oct31 October 08:35

          A few people that have some kind of reason are probably also not interested in going to places where you would need a pass. They probably haven’t even heard about covid or covid vaccines.

        • meta says:

          31 Oct31 October 08:36

          And on the vaccination of children, it’s already coming. The US has started vaccinating over 5s.

      • J says:

        31 Oct31 October 09:26

        If the reason for Covid passports is national medical security, then your probaility of infecting others is what should count as to whether or not you get a passport. A recent negative test should be the main criteria, followed by antibody levels (whether natural or vaccine induced). No reason someone who has had the vaccine and produced no antibody response should be given the passport, but someone with high antibody levels from prior infection shouldn’t.

        • John says:

          31 Oct31 October 10:09

          That’s why some let you show proof of recovery (German 2G) and France considers you fully vaccinated with one jab + normal infection

          But the reason for the UK ones seem to be to encourage vaccination rather than “medical security” to use your term. Not sure if that really works because if I was anti-vaccine passport I would deliberately not get vaccinated

      • Amore says:

        31 Oct31 October 10:09

        Yuff, what do you mean by “endangering others”? I think it’s been proven long time ago that the vaccines are for your own good and you spread the same viral load whether you are vaxxed or not. Can’t believe people still think that unvaccinated folks are dangerous for society. I am vaxxed btw, had to do it because of my travel needs…

      • Tracey says:

        31 Oct31 October 10:21

        There are so so few genuine medical reasons not to be vaccinated. For people allergic to an ingredient in one of the vaccines, they could take another one. There are some people in the middle of treatments or about to have surgery who need to delay their vaccine, but they shouldn’t be mingling in the mean time. Now that the recommendation is for pregnant women and the immuno compromised to be vaccinated, there really is hardly anyone who can’t be vaccinated.

• George K says:

  31 Oct31 October 08:48

  Just to say that I have found that if you have saved the QR code in your wallet, sometimes they come up as invalid, but if they scan your NHS app there is a bigger degree of success.

  I had my second dose on my wallet, and it was being constantly rejected, but I was being let through after a check of the second vaccination date. At some point both me and my wife went to a restaurant that decided to be quite stringent and wasn’t very happy with letting us through without the checker throwing up a green tick, so we tried many iterations, and in the end what worked was the second dose straight from the NHS app. The vaccination status PDF also worked.

  • HH says:

    31 Oct31 October 12:30

    Pointing to their hilarious incompetence, I realised last month that the Wallet version has accidentally swapped the Dose 1 and 2 QR Codes… So Dose 2 pass would get rejected as it’s actually Dose 1, while Dose 1 pass is accepted. I don’t know if they’ve fixed it, but you can check for yourself by scanning the passes into one of the EU apps and seeing whether the correct Dose is entered.

    • George K says:

      31 Oct31 October 12:58

      That makes total sense why the wallet version of dose two was showing as invalid!

• Phil says:

  31 Oct31 October 08:59

  Will the US accept the NHS app?

• Peter says:

  31 Oct31 October 09:05

  Great news, was in Riga three weeks ago and many places were really strict with only accepting the EU pass. Got turned down from a few restaurants and bars just because of Brexit and the incompetence of the government to sort this out from the start.

  • John says:

    31 Oct31 October 09:59

    I m sorry the government’s priority isn’t making sure their Covid strategy aligns to interoperability with Lativan restaurants.

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