So I’ve been vaccinated 5 times - 2 vaccinations + 3 boosters. I got the last booster in October, forgot my CDC card and was told I could come back to get it updated. I came back and they said the card was full and they don’t give out new ones.
Even worse, my surname was misspelled on my original CDC card, I asked if they’d fix it, I was told no. No new cards, go away.
Is this card even a useful record at this point? I’m thinking for international travel. I live in California and have their totally updated - all five shots! - Covid vaccination record. I’m told this CA record is accepted internationally, so I’ll carry that (and the dumbass CDC card) when I visit SE Asia next week.
What’s up with the CDC card being so lame? I mean, it was already lame, but pharmacists not even being willing to keep it current is beyond lame.
When I got my second booster the pharmacist actually stapled a second card to the first one because the sticker for the first booster took up all of the remaining real estate. Nobody has really been interested in seeing vaccinations since the 2021, and frankly given whether you are vaccinated or not you could still be infected and shedding virions, I don’t think it really matters. To the extent that anybody really cares, the first two shots qualify as “fully vaccinated” and the subsequent boosters don’t have any kind of legal weight.
What do US people generally show, traveling internationally, for proof of vaccination these days? The (lame) CDC card? A patchwork set of state vaccination papers?
I’ve been wondering about that. I’ve gotten all the shots and have carried the card with me since I got it, and the only people who asked to see it were whoever gave me the next shot.
I still have my original card; when I got my fifth shot (third booster) a few weeks ago, the pharmacist who administered the shot entered the data on the back of the card.
I’ve been asked to show the card to anyone (other than someone giving me another booster) once in the past year, at a gaming convention a couple of months ago, where they were still asking for proof of vaccination.
You can probably find your vaccination record online if you need it. At least we can in Wisconsin. It even has button to provide you with a cleaned up version for printing. How widely accepted, if it all, that would be for proving your vaccination status, I don’t know.
My health system’s portal app has a toggle to display my vaccination data and a QR with that data on my phone. However, no one has asked for it except the airline on the US end of an international trip to a country requiring vaccination.
After I got my 2 original shots, I had a copy made of my card, and I laminated that copy so that I could more easily carry it in my billfold. I repeated the process after my 3rd shot.
I got my 4th shot a couple weeks ago, and so far I haven’t done that process this time around. I doubt that I will.
This is what I did. I photocopied the original card with my two original shots documented. 67% reduction makes it just a hair smaller than a business card. Make that copy on cardstock, trim it to size, and then laminate. I made two of those: one for my wallet, one that attaches to my faculty ID badge.
And of course nobody has ever asked to see it. I still have my OG card with my boosters documented on it but since nobody has asked to see my vax proof in over a year I’m not inclined to make any more travel-sized copies of the up-to-date card.
I needed proof of vaccination and a negative Covid test to get into Bermuda last month, but I think that whole program was terminated a few weeks later.
It’s a medical record card, as it was intended to be (and why it was not more official looking). As such its use is limited but important for the times you need it. There are times when you may need to show it, especially when traveling internationally. Despite the politics, it was never intended to be, nor is it a national ID access mark of the beast card.
When I got my second booster there wasn’t room to put the info on my existing CDC card, so they gave me a second CDC card. I’m mystified the OP’s pharmacy would not give them another card.
About the only remaining hold-out requiring proof-of-vax is China. I now carry both paper-clipped to my passport. Throughout COVID I’d had to show that card about twice even with all the international travel I do.
That’s pretty much what happened to me, more or less. I went in for my second booster in October, and got to the stage where the pharmacist gives me the shot, and had the “Oh shit!” moment where I remembered that I left our CDC cards at home.
Pharmacist was like “Don’t worry about it; we’re not giving them out anymore for new vaccinations or boosters anyway.”
If we’re going the direction where it’ll be treated like influenza, there won’t be any need for a proof of vaccine card. That said, there’s some mechanism where the pharmacy did report my COVID booster, and all the rest of it to some sort of centralized clearinghouse, because I can go onto my doctor’s EHR portal and see all four of my vaccinations/boosters, the date they were given, where they were given, what vaccine was given, and the lot number. There’s also some sort of QR code I can print for myself that links to that page as well.
There’s also an entry on the profile for “Seasonal Influenza Booster” that tracks all the ones I’ve been given, whether they were at the doctor’s office, a pharmacy, or even at one of those at-work health fairs- all the way back to 2015.
So I’m guessing if there’s some need for proof of vaccination, we’ll be getting it in the future in some way other than the rather 1950s-ish CDC cards that we got in 2020.
My son went to Barcelona recently and not only was he required to provide proof of vaccination, he had to have received a vaccine within 270 days of when he was traveling so since his initial series was further back, he had to get a booster.