COVID certificate hyjinx and fun. Happy ending.

Family, Education, Health and Pets
1
Well. This has been an interesting half an hour:

I was vaccinated in the US in July.

We moved to Switzerland on 30 September.

My US QR code isn’t recognized/valid in Europe, and the handwritten CDC vaccination cards are not approved here either as they are easily forged.

So it took about two and a half weeks to get my info confirmed and my certificate. Before then, I’d smile (masked), apologize that I only had my US certificates and hope for the best when asked for it. I was never denied, but I definitely had that scarlet letter.

This morning my official COVID certification came through.

I uploaded it.

I got a “not valid - expired” message. I retried it. Same message.

I read my certificate more carefully. Apparently I’ve been vaccinated in 1998 - so it’s expired!

WTF?!? 1998?!?

I sent a quick email back, and since I’m used to the bureaucracy of the US and Japan, I expected it would take another week (or more).

I also called the health office for the federal government, and they connected me to the Geneva health office. The woman who answered (in fluent English - yay!), laughed and said “Check your email.” I responded that I had. She said “Do it again, my colleague next to me had just received and responded to your email, and corrected the form. And we are laughing, because ‘1998’ - she is born that year, and you called so fast. Pardon us. Sorry for any confusion. It’s okay now.”

I cannot imagine this phone conversation in Japan or the US. I’m still laughing.

And I have my proper COVID certificate now. Whew.

2
Glad it worked out for you. They take Covid very seriously here and almost always reply immediately in regards to Covid certificates. I’m assuming the government has invested a fair amount of money into their program and have hired enough people to make it work efficiently.

One of the perks of living in Switzerland. 😊

3
Apparently there was a problem last evening where scans were not confirming the correct status. Lasted about an hour for Swiss certificates and a little longer for EU certificates.

But all fixed now.

4
I don't think that this would be related to my situation... the paperwork was submitted several days ago. And the paperwork returned from the health office had the wrong year, everything else was okay.