Registering overseas vaccinations:
the quest for booster jabs
The vaccine rollout
The vaccine booster campaign has increased across the UK in recent weeks, in part of an attempt to tackle the rising number of cases of the new Omicron variant.
The vaccine rollout was initially launched in winter 2020, starting with more vulnerable groups before moving through the adult population by age, with the eldest first.
It has now expanded to include all those aged 12 and over.
After a successful rollout of first and second doses — with nine in 10 over the age of 12 having had one vaccine and eight in 10 having had two — focus has now turned to boosters.
More than 25 million boosters, or third doses, have been administered so far, but this is still half that of people who have received their first dose.
The booster campaign begins
Originally just targeted at people over 40 and vulnerable groups, booster jabs are now being offered to everyone over the age of 18.
Having first said that all over-18s would be offered a jab by the end of January, the government brought the timeline forward and said every eligible adult would be offered one by the end of the year.
In addition, the minimum gap between a second and third dose has been reduced from six to three months.
Individuals can also pre-book their third dose if it has been at least two months since their second dose, but their appointment will be at least three months from this dose.
If you’ve had a positive covid test, you must wait four weeks before getting your booster.
All those between the ages of 12 and 17 are eligible for their first two doses of the vaccine.
None of the vaccines are currently eligible for children under the age of 12.
Issues arise:
Covid booking site crashes and Lateral Flow Test Shortages
After the offer of covid boosters was expanded to all over-18s, thousands of people tried to book their jabs, causing the NHS website to crash.
As a result, long queues have formed at walk-in vaccine centres across England, with queues of up to four hours at some sites.
Meanwhile, ordering free lateral flow kits from gov.uk was temporarily suspended.
As covid cases reached record highs, exceeding 100,000 daily cases for the first time during the pandemic, the demand for tests rose.
Test ordering has since resumed, although people are encouraged not to pick up from pharmacies if they can, to prioritise home delivery for those unable to pick up in-person.
UK residents registering overseas vaccinations
As of December 15, UK residents who were vaccinated abroad — including in Northern Ireland — are eligible to use England’s NHS covid pass if they have had two doses of an approved vaccination.
This will allow them to book an appointment to receive a booster in England.
Without this, residents who were not vaccinated in the UK are unable to book an appointment, but they are allowed to get a walk-in booster with proof of their first two vaccines.
Before this, individuals who had their first two vaccinations overseas had no way of proving their vaccination status through the NHS system.
The four jabs currently approved are AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Jannsen and Moderna.
In order to register their vaccination, people must book an appointment as one of just 16 selected vaccination sites in England.
Initially only a handful of sites were available, with the closest to London being a site in Reading and none further north than Peterborough.
More sites now seem to have been added to the site, though a full list is not available online or through calling 119.
If someone living in Cornwall wanted to register their vaccines, for example, they would have to travel nearly 300 miles, or make a 12 hour round trip.
People have been advised to book the first available slot — which may not be until January — and then check online frequently to see if closer, or sooner, slots are available.
However, without a list of sites, it is difficult for people to know whether a closer site to them even exists.
An NHS spokesperson said: “A new service allows people aged 18 or over to record COVID-19 vaccinations received outside England, Scotland and Wales with the NHS, so they can get an accurate NHS COVID Pass.”
They noted that there is now regional coverage in England, including London and north of Peterborough and that the National Booking Service is updated regularly with available sites and appointments.
Claire Ehr
Vaccinated in South Korea
Claire Ehr, 24, a dual British and American citizen, received their first and second vaccines in South Korea while teaching there on a Fulbright scholarship.
Claire said: “I have both vaccines certified by the Korean government system.
“I have an app called Coov that they use in Korea, but while Coov is in English, the Coov app isn't accepted in other countries.
“So I went to my local governmental hospital in my city in Korea as I was planning to come back home, and I got a vaccine certificate in English for verification purposes abroad."
Claire plans to take their documents to their GP to have their vaccine registered by the NHS.
They returned home to England on December 21 with the hope of getting a booster jab before heading to America for graduate school in January.
If they are unable to register their vaccine to book their appointment, they may have to wait until they are in America to receive their booster.
Claire said: “I was in Korea on a Fulbright grant and so my cohort are all Americans and many of them are going back to the US for good and are going to register their vaccinations.
“I've heard it's much easier there.
“They're all coming back at the same time as me so they are going through that process right now, but I haven't heard any consternation from them.
“I'm pretty confident that I can get things registered pretty easily in the US with the documentation I have.”
They noted that the rising cases and new Omicron wave made it more urgent to get a booster sooner rather than later though.
Claire said: “I think now that everyone's getting boosters I would feel much safer and more secure to have a booster, especially in London with the cases as they are, to be able to join my community and do things that are important to us around this time.
“It would be really sad if I couldn't do that, because I have been looking forward to Christmas a lot.
Shani Haquin
Vaccinated in Israel
Shani Haquin, 25, is a student and gallery worker from Israel.
She got her first two vaccines in January 2021 in Israel and then contracted covid while in Israel in August.
None of this is recognised on the NHS system.
Shani said: “I had covid and I had two vaccines and I can't even report that to the NHS so it's weird.”
She explained that she has both an Israeli and French covid pass, but because she moved house during the pandemic she is currently left without a GP.
After attempting to register her vaccines with her old GP and being denied two in her new area, she gave up.
She said: “I tried to book online, and I couldn't for the booster and I tried as well for a first dose and I couldn't do that.
“I also tried to walk in, but they asked me for a letter from my GP, which is kind of problematic now because I don't have a GP.
"I’m in this vicious circle where I can't have a booster anywhere.
“I will go to my GP tomorrow and stay there until hopefully it’s fixed."
She noted that the current shortage of lateral flow tests could cause problems as she uses them whenever she needs to show a covid pass.
She said: “Right now I still have some, but I don't know what is going to happen because I don’t have a lot left.
“Sometimes I just show my Israeli pass, but I have to do tests every day, or three or four times a week, which is kind of annoying because I had covid recently.”
Now with the rise in cases, the need to register her vaccine has become more urgent.
If she is unable to get her booster soon, Shani is considering returning to Israel to get her booster jab.
Israel has confirmed 341 cases of Omicron and has recently introduced a fourth vaccine for over-60s and healthcare workers.
She said: “Before, I didn’t think I would do a booster here, but just because of the high cases I got really anxious and decided to try to.
"I’ve been trying for a week but I can’t.”
Jordan Jones
Vaccinated in Jordan
Jordan Jones, 24, is a researcher who got his first two Pfizer vaccines in Jordan this summer, where he was studying at the time.
Jordan managed to get his booster on December 18 in London after registering through the government website, but it wasn’t his first attempt to register his vaccines.
He said: “I had been attempting to register my vaccine for months before this.
“As soon as I returned from Jordan in September I was contacting my GP and NHS 119 about registering my vaccines to no avail — everyone I spoke to gave slightly different answers but the overall theme was that it was impossible to register overseas vaccines, ‘sorry for any inconvenience this may cause you’ etc.”
Once the online registration system opened, Jordan explained the process was straightforward, if a bit hectic.
Jordan explained: “The process was really smooth — I just had to register on the government vaccination website and wait to receive an appointment.
“The process initially felt a bit more chaotic due to everyone scrambling to get a booster appointment.
“I finally managed to find an appointment at my GP on December 20.
“However, I had an appointment to register my overseas vaccines at a vaccination centre on [December 18] and they just gave me the booster while I was there, which was very convenient.
“I went to an office where the required information from my passport and vaccine certificate was taken, and then they said that it should show on the system within a few days.”
Jordan said not having access to an NHS covid pass has not been too much of an inconvenience, but was concerned requirements would be extended to smaller venues like restaurants and pubs.
He added that there was a level of freedom that would come from not having to worry about taking lateral flow tests in advance.
Jordan said: “It means that I will be able to enter venues that require the covid pass like anyone else who has been fully vaccinated, and that, should the requirement be extended to even more venues, I will be able to enter those too without having to plan too much in advance.
“Although curiously, as I was leaving my overseas vaccine registration appointment, the man in the office did mention that vaccines given outside of the UK, US and Europe still aren’t eligible to create QR codes on the NHS app so I will still have to take a lateral flow test before I go anywhere that requires the covid pass, which I was not expecting and which kind of defeats the whole purpose of registering the overseas vaccines…
“I cannot confirm whether this is the case as I haven’t tried to generate the pass yet, but if it is true then that’s a bit silly.”
Jordan added that there was a disparity between those vaccinated in England and those vaccinated abroad.
He said: “I felt that it was fundamentally unfair that people vaccinated in England could get the covid pass but others who were vaccinated abroad with the same vaccines weren’t eligible.”
Amelia Isaacs
Vaccinated in America
I received my Pfizer vaccines back in March and April 2021 in Baltimore, Maryland.
Since I arrived home in London in June I had been trying to register my vaccines with my GP.
I thought that eventually I would need it to register a booster, but I also wanted to travel and at one point wasn’t able to simply because I did not have an NHS covid pass.
While I would have been able to get a letter from my GP to prove my vaccination status, this could have taken over a week to arrive, and, as it is now, situations around travel were extremely precarious in the summer.
When I arrived in London, I first tried to register my vaccination status through my GP.
I was told that they were not able to help me and to call 119.
119 told me they could not help me, and that I should call my GP.
I was told by the 119 caller that there is an international code for vaccines that my GP should be able to manually override in their system to update my vaccination status.
While on the phone to my GP for another reason, I threw in the question at the end to ask what she knew about this.
She told me that this was probably the case, but that GPs had not been given these codes, so I should speak to 119 about it again.
Eventually I gave up trying and resigned myself to more than the average number of lateral flow tests, every time I needed a covid pass.
I did not ever want to run the risk of my American vaccination card not being accepted for whatever reason, and there was never any harm in taking a test.
However, when the booster rollout began, I had a renewed interest in getting my vaccinations registered and thought I would try again.
Several months had passed, so perhaps there would be some development in this elusive code.
There was not.
I called my GP’s office once again and was kindly told by the receptionist that she could add a picture to my files so it was on record, but they couldn’t put anything in the system officially.
She told me that many people had been calling with the same issue in anticipation of booster registration and that none of them were able to have their status updated.
I was very lucky to be able to get a booster without registering my vaccines.
After waiting in an online queue to book an appointment to register my first and second vaccines, I saw that my nearest available appointment was in Ipswich, more than three hours and 70 miles from my home.
Somehow in the few moments it took for me to click between appointments, there went from three appointments, including one on December 23, to just the one on January 5.
So I booked the appointment, but given it had already been 8 months since my second dose, cases in London are at an all time high and I have a weakened immune system, I was keen to get my booster as soon as I could.
I visited multiple vaccination sites in my area until I found one that was taking walk-ins and joined the queue.
I’m lucky that I had the time to wait in line to get my booster.
It’s still not in the system, and I honestly don’t know if I’ll actually be able to get to Ipswich to attend my appointment in January to register them.
I do know, though, that I am a little more protected against covid now.
I also know that the kind volunteer who gave me my booster told me quite clearly that my vaccinations wouldn’t show on my record on my NHS covid app, but that if my GP wanted to, they could input themselves.
So why are people being asked to travel potentially hundreds of miles to register their vaccine status in order to get a booster if GPs can do this?
NHS Digital declined to comment on this issue.
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