COVID-19 vaccine certificates may be available to the general public in October, Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) Usec. Manny Caintic said Tuesday, Sep. 7.
Following the soft launching of "VaxCertPH," the country’s online portal issuing certificate for individuals vaccinated against COVID-19 on Monday, Caintic said they "will try best" to make the system already available to all Filipinos next month.
"Our main objective is not on the system per se, but on the readiness of the LGU (local government units) to be able to rectify the (vaccination) records that they sent to us," he said in a press briefing, explaining that "what we need though is to perfect the data coming in to the system" so the rollout cannot be done nationwide yet.
"And we have actually thought many LGUs already in advance. But prudence dictated that we started in NCR (National Capital Region) first, because this is where we will be able to prefect the not so obvious nuances that we might discover (along the way)," he added.
According to Caintic, local government units in Metro Manila are still taking time iin terms of rectifying vaccination data and submitting them to the system, which in turn, hinder the department.
"It is challenge for the LGUs, for those especially who do not have enough equipment, to submit their line list religiously, everyday," Caintic said.
Despite this, the department head said, the Philippines is still one of the “leading” countries in the world to have a portal that issues vaccine certificates to its citizens, and the World Health Organization (WHO) "attests to that."
"Even before the World Health Organization standard on digital certificate came out on July 27, we have been one of the very early counties who have already tried to adhere,” he said.
"We’re still improving the system, so when we start our national launching, everything is already right," he said in Filipino, "Just please give us several weeks (to accomplish it)."