Covid vaccine certificate to expire after nine months without booster: Dutch Health Min.

The vaccination certificate, with which people can get a green checkmark in the CoronaCheck app, may also get a validity period within the Netherlands, caretaker corona minister Hugo de Jonge said in a letter to parliament. The vaccination certificate may remain valid for nine months without a booster shot.

The European Commission wants to introduce a validity period for the international coronavirus passport. This means that people who have been fully vaccinated will no longer get a green check for travel abroad after nine months if they have not yet had a booster shot. The government supports the Commission's proposal.

For domestic use, the vaccination certificate cannot currently expire without a booster shot. "However, the protection against transmission decreases the longer ago the vaccination was completed," wrote De Jonge. That is, the longer it's been since someone was fully vaccinated, the less well the vaccination protects against contracting the virus.

According to the Minister, this applies even more to the possibly more contagious Omicron variant. That is why he is working on a validity period for the vaccination certificates for domestic use. A coronavirus access pass for domestic use can be obtained based on vaccination, a negative test result, or proof of recent recovery from the virus.

The Minister wants the rules for the validity of the vaccination certificate in the Netherlands to be as similar as possible to those in the rest of Europe. This means that the term may also be nine months for the coronavirus access pass. A spokeswoman said that such a validity period for domestic use would not start earlier than that for the European travel pass. The European Commission's proposal says the new rules will come into effect in February.

De Jonge said that shortening the validity of vaccination certificates is more difficult for the coronavirus access pass than for the international travel pass. A spokeswoman for the Ministry explained that very little information about people is currently registered in the CoronaCheck app for domestic use for privacy reasons. For example, it is not registered whether someone's green checkmark is based on vaccination or a test, for example. "That makes it difficult to put in a validity period." According to her, this is not an easily resolved issue.