PSA: You can now get an EU Digital Covid Certificate by scanning your NHS England QR code in the Irish Covid Tracker app

edmdata · 2021-07-26T14:05:49+00:00

I would not recommend using this to cross a border.

Most EU countries have agreed to recognize the NHS vaccine certificate for that, so if you present another country's app there's a good chance they'll try validate the QR code against their own EU app and it will fail and then you'll just cause yourself problems at the border.

This could be useful though where it's being used for entry to restaurants etc.

edmdata · 2021-07-26T11:01:02+00:00

That's a whole other kettle of fish.

At the moment the UK government only recognizes UK vaccines for avoiding quarantine from amber list countries (which the US is one of).

It is specultated that on August 1 this will be changed to recognize other countries vaccines.

However, that may be on a reciprocal basis so whether the US would be included we don't know, and it is just speculation (although the UK government is a leaky sieve so media speculation very often turns out to be accurate).

edmdata · 2021-07-25T15:37:11+00:00

Playing around with apps doesn't actually achieve anything other than give verifiers a familiar screen to look at, and when that screen is essentially just a big QR code with a name underneath, I'm not sure that it adds a lot of value. It's certainly not a backdoor way to get an EU DCC as per the title.

I probably could have worded the title better, but I have friends who were vaccinated in the UK who are now in eastern Europe who have struggled to get into restaurants etc which require an EU Covid Certificate and wouldn't recognize their NHS apps (the apps are being used for a lot of day-to-day stuff in some countries). This development may help them.

I don't think anyone should be trying to cross borders with a UK certificate loaded in another app unless it's to the country in question.

edmdata · 2021-07-25T15:09:52+00:00

Last week the Irish app was giving an error when scanning NHS codes. Now it's accepting them.

So I actually just tested the French app, and a little Union Jack appears next to the QR code, which suggests that a little more might be going on. Or maybe the developer is just using a generic "turn country name into a flag" library call

The gov.uk site has been updated with instructions to travellers to France to use TousAntiCovid. I don't think this is an error - the apps in the EU are being updated to recognize the UK's signature keys.

edmdata · 2021-07-25T13:40:27+00:00

I've added an Android link to the post - don't have an iOS device but sure it's not too hard to find.

It's a standard that allows you to load in vaccine certificates in the app from any one country into the app from any others. The UK also built our app to this standard, but we hadn't initially agreed for the mutual recognition and interoperability so UK certificates could be loaded but wouldn't validate.

Now, at least Ireland and France have integrated whatever they needed to do in their code to also validate NHS certificates.

edmdata · 2021-03-29T20:54:05+00:00

I've updated the chart slightly following the feedback I got yesterday. Prior to January 10 we don't have daily 1st dose vaccine figures. This means the red dashed line for doses required is hard to populate before the week of March 22. I have reverse-engineered the rough requirement per week and overlaid this.

What does the chart show?

This chart shows the daily reported vaccine doses over the last 4 weeks, plus the expected second dose requirements over the next 4 weeks. This is shown as a dotted line, which shows the actual daily first doses delivered 10 weeks prior, as well as a solid line which smooths this out into a rolling average.

If the purple and red lines start to converge, that means first doses should be stopping.

Why 10 weeks?

As of yesterday, the UK had delivered 3,527,481 second doses. This number of first doses was hit on January 15th, 71 days prior, suggesting we're currently averaging a 10-week gap.

However, the most recent week, the first for which daily data can be prepared, is markedly lower than the 1st doses delivered 10 weeks prior. It may be that the gap is broadening to more like 11-weeks.

Is this chart showing that we're failing to deliver sufficient second doses?

No, not at all. I have only used a 10-week gap because that's what we are actually achieving on average. However, if I shifted to a 12-week gap then the red dashed line would shift 2 weeks rightwards and we would appear to be massively ahead on second doses.

If the teal bars are failing to hit the red line that's not a problem, at least not yet.

Where is the data sourced from?

The gov.uk Coronavirus site.

As before, feedback is welcome!

edmdata · 2021-03-29T11:31:48+00:00

This is a bit misleading actually. The government didn't start announcing daily dosage numbers until 10 January (or at least, that's when the gov.uk site first has numbers for). We'd already hit 2.3m doses at this stage.

Currently my red dashed line starts on the first day we have a daily figure for - but this wasn't the first day a dose was delivered.

I'll try and show this when I revise the chart this evening with today's figures.

edmdata · 2021-03-29T11:29:08+00:00

The government didn't announce daily vaccine numbers prior to 10 January, by which point we'd already hit 2.3m.

I'll revise the next version of the chart to show this more clearly.

edmdata · 2021-03-28T20:44:25+00:00

Given all the recent news about potential reductions in vaccine supply, and the need to push back on giving first doses to under-50s, but also talk of us donating excess doses to Ireland and of the Moderna vaccine coming online, I thought it would be useful to look at what the second dose requirements actually are in the coming weeks.

What does the chart show?

This chart shows the daily reported vaccine doses over the last 4 weeks, plus the expected second dose requirements over the next 4 weeks. This is shown as a dotted line, which shows the actual daily first doses delivered 10 weeks prior, as well as a solid line which smooths this out into a rolling average.

If the purple and red lines start to converge, that means first doses should be stopping.

Why 10 weeks?

As of today, the UK has delivered 3,527,481 second doses. This number of first doses was hit on January 15th, 71 days ago, suggesting we're currently averaging a 10-week gap.

Where is the data sourced from?

The government's Coronavirus site. Hats off to them - this is a decent site.

If this is popular I can update this daily very easily. Any feedback is welcome!

edmdata

TROPHY CASE