Australia launches international COVID vaccination certificate

Australian travellers will require an International COVID-19 Vaccination Certificate to show proof of your COVID-19 vaccinations when travelling overseas.

International COVID-19 Vaccination Certificate

New vaccine certificates for international travel are now available via the Australian Government’s Services Australia  MyGov website portal.  from Tuesday morning, as the federal government takes the next step for the further easing of international border restrictions.

The International COVID-19 Vaccination Certificate provides a secure record of vaccinations for people travelling internationally. It’s been developed to meet agreed international travel standards.

Key points:

• The certificates are proof to border authorities around the world that the holder has been vaccinated against COVID-19
• The International COVID-19 Vaccination Certificates work in a similar fashion to existing vaccine certificates and will be available for download through the MyGov website.
• They have QR codes which can be scanned by foreign border officials

Australians can get their international certificate when getting ready to travel if both of these apply:

• you have a current Australian passport or foreign passport with an Australian visa
• you’ve had at least one dose of an approved COVID-19 vaccine.

“If you travel overseas, and that overseas country requires proof of your vaccination status, you will have a copy of it,” Employment Minister Stuart Robert said.

“You may not have to use it — there may be many countries you’ll visit that have no requirement to demonstrate you’ve been vaccinated.

“But the last thing the government wants for Australians when they travel overseas is to be stuck overseas because they can’t prove they’ve been vaccinated.”

The documents are linked to a physical passport, with people asked to provide their passport details when they request the document from Medicare.

The certificate is then sent to the person who requested it, and they can print it off or store it as a file on their smartphone.

Mr Robert, who has responsibility for the rollout of the certificates, believed Australians wanting to travel would embrace the new process.

“Australians understand when you travel overseas, countries require documentation to prove who you are,” he said.

“In the same way, for example, that for the last 20 years Australians, when they travelled to Africa, they have had to carry a little international vaccination book that showed the Yellow Fever vaccination.

“This is exactly the same — it’s just done through digital tech as opposed to a paper form.”

The federal government insisted the certificates, with the built-in QR codes, were as secure as a traditional passport – carrying a higher level of encryption than the proof of vaccination certificates currently on offer for domestic use.

Foreign nationals can have the Australia certificate linked to their passport if they received the vaccination in Australia

Mr Robert said the system had been thoroughly tested for a number of weeks.

“We will be, I think, the first jurisdiction in the world that will go live with this, having worked with the International Civil Aviation Organization, as they put these standards together in May this year,” he said.

Founder of Stonebridge at Big White, Sue Thorley welcome the rollout of the vaccination certificates, as another step forward towards international travel recommencing in the weeks ahead.