Covid vaccine passports are another confused mess. Just wait until you try to get one – Brian Wilson

Having navigated the Scottish government’s unwieldy system for acquiring confirmation of double vaccination, I am not optimistic about how the hasty plan to introduce vaccine passports at nightclubs and football matches is going to work out.

Covid vaccine passports are being introduced in paper and digital forms for certain large events

If we had worked UK-wide to develop and implement the confirmation app, we would of course be in a far better place and able to enter countries that don't accept the Scottish version. I would be interested to hear the public health or technical arguments against that, as opposed to purely political ones which we know too well.

To enter the system, you need a user name that was on the letter offering a vaccination appointment. I’m not sure everyone attending nightclubs or football matches will have retained these letters once they served their stated purpose. I hadn’t.

If you don’t have that, you must enter the date of vaccination to get one. Most people will work that out, even if it was several months ago, but a significant number will not. It seems unfortunate the usual medical identifiers are not sufficient for this process.

Those at the sharp end are, of course, the ones dealing with people who, through omission or belief, will not have the necessary documentation (which until yesterday was to be delivered by post to them within 14 days which is the modern equivalent of sending it by stagecoach). I don’t envy them.

With case numbers topping the Euro-charts, waiting lists for the NHS at record levels and the prospect of confusion and recrimination over vaccine passports, all the political PR spin of the past 18 months now seems deeply irrelevant.

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