The NHS Covid Pass, used to show a person’s vaccine status for travel and events, stopped working on Wednesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The feature, contained in the NHS smartphone app, usually allows users to access a barcode or text records about which vaccine doses they have had.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Instead, users received error messages or a notice saying that high traffic volumes are “limiting access to the service”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Normal access to vaccine records was restored after more than three hours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“The NHS Covid Pass service was temporarily unavailable between 11:45 and 15:15 today as a result of a technical issue with a global service provider that affected many different organisations,” NHS Digital said in a statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Online, many travellers expressed concern that they might not be able to prove their vaccinated status at airports or other departure points without the app.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Some claimed they missed their flight because of the problem, while others reported being “stranded” at an airport unable to fly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Journalist Caroline Frost was among those affected, tweeting that she was “kindly offered a later flight for \u00a3250 and an express PCR test at Heathrow for \u00a3119 – not happening.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Chuck Adolphy, a 24-year-old from Surrey, was at Gatwick Airport waiting to fly to Slovenia on holiday when he found the app was no longer working.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He told the BBC he tried to show staff working for EasyJet his paper vaccine card – which is not widely accepted a proof of vaccination – but that they were “having none of it”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He said he was turned away and missed his flight – and that EasyJet has refused to give him a refund.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mr Adolphy said he did not know if the airline employees knew the outage was widespread at the time. But he described the situation as a “shambles”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He is now hoping to book a flight tomorrow instead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
EasyJet later said in a statement that it was “not aware of any significant impact” due to the outage, but was offering passengers who could not board a free transfer to an alternative flight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is possible to save an offline version of the Covid Pass, which remains valid for 30 days. Some users simply screenshot their barcode, and iPhone users can also save a version to their Apple Wallet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But those methods needed to have been done before the system went down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Other elements of the general-purpose NHS app, such as subscriptions, appeared to be working during the outage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Covid Pass is also required for entry to some events and locations in England, though that has become less common as restrictions have been relaxed at most entertainment venues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The digital version is available for those over 16 years old who were vaccinated in England, Wales, or the Isle of Man.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A paper version of the pass is also available as a letter for fully-vaccinated people in England. The letter is sent to the address on file with a patient’s local GP surgery, but can take up to five working days to arrive, the NHS says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The vaccine record in the NHS app is separate to the NHS Covid-19 app, which was widely used earlier in the pandemic to estimate exposure to those who tested positive to the virus, and “pinged” many people with self-isolation alerts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The NHS Covid Pass, used to show a person’s vaccine status for travel and events, stopped working on Wednesday. The feature, contained in the NHS smartphone app, usually allows users to access a barcode or text records about which vaccine doses they have had. Instead, users received error messages or a notice saying that high […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n