An unassuming 3-by-4-inch piece of cardstock could become your ticket back to normalcy, with colleges, airlines, event venues and more weighing plans to require documentation of a COVID-19 vaccine. So, to protect that prized proof of inoculation, should you get it laminated?
OfficeMax and Staples are currently offering promotions where residents can have their cards laminated for free. But some are concerned that the cards should stay writeable for booster shots down the road.
“If you want to laminate it, just know that it might be hard in the future to do anything more to it,” Panagis Galiatsatos, a physician with the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, told NJ Advance Media.
His recommendation: Laminate a copy of the card. But even more importantly, Galiatsatos said people should take a picture, write down the confirmation numbers and send a copy to your physician’s office.
“There’s other ways to maintain proof of vaccination without compromising the card… there’s a better way to do this than just relying on the cards that they give you,” he said.
However, Stephanie Silvera, an epidemiologist and public health professor at Montclair State University, thinks the concern around lamination is probably overblown.
“I’m not particularly worried about the ability to write on a particular card a year from now, so I think if people want to get it laminated, there may be value in doing so at least in the short term,” she told NJ Advance Media.
Former New York Giants football star Tiki Barber shows his COVID-19 vaccination record card after getting his shot at a vaccine site in Jersey City on March 24. It shows his birth name, Atiim.
Residents will likely have to receive COVID vaccine booster shots in the future, though by then, Silvera hopes we’ve figured out a more efficient and centralized system to record peoples’ vaccinations.
“Going forward we are going need to have a better system of keeping track of our vaccinations than hopefully people not losing their cards,” she said.
While it’s too early to say how society will recover and react to the continued threat of the virus long-term, Silvera predicts our yearly flu season will become flu and COVID season. Vaccine booster shots every six months or year are probably coming down the pipeline, though it’s still much too early to tell, she said.
Whether a vaccine card can be required to patronize businesses or travel is also still up in the air, though Gov. Phil Murphy urged New Jerseyans to “hold on to it.”
“Don’t get rid of the card,” Murphy said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” earlier this month. “That is likely to be something valuable. Keep the card, laminate it and put it in your wallet.”
“And in terms of what value that card will have, other than your own personal health, (is) to be determined,” Murphy added. “But that is under consideration and there are lots of different potential uses for that, whether it’s going to a sporting event, getting on a plane, etc. So hold onto it and, again, we will first and foremost take our guidance from the CDC.”
Health privacy concerns
The Republican Governors Association hit back at Murphy for his comment, calling it a “health privacy minefield.”
“Hard-working New Jersey residents have the right to keep their health care decisions between themselves and their doctor, and don’t need Phil Murphy in the waiting room telling patients to make sure they ‘laminate’ their vaccine card on the way out,” Republican Governors Association spokesman Will Reinert said in a press release.
Regardless of what Murphy or the CDC decides, the need to provide proof of vaccines is already becoming a feature of post-pandemic life. Rutgers University became one of the first schools in the nation to require a coronavirus vaccine as a condition for fall enrollment. And legal experts told NJ Advance Media that employers are at liberty to make the same rule for workplaces.
In Camden County, officials have urged residents to laminate, make copies and keep the card with them at all times, like a driver’s license.
“For us, as a community, to get fully back to normal — and as Rutgers underscored with its new policy last week — proof of vaccination will be key to the process of protecting the overall public health,” Commissioner Director Louis Cappelli Jr. said in a press release.
Right now, the United States has no central database for vaccines, leaving paper cards as the only proof of inoculation for many of the 145 million Americans who have received coronavirus shots to date. The Biden Administration is working on developing a standard credential or “vaccine passport,” but the effort will require coordination across dozens of agencies and faces a number of other challenges, The Washington Post reported.
For now, if residents want to make their vaccine cards or copies more durable, they can go to Office Depot and OfficeMax stores through July 25 using coupon code 52516714 or Staples stores indefinitely with coupon code 81450.
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Josh Axelrod may be reached at jaxelrod@njadvancemedia.com. Tell us your coronavirus story or send a tip here.