Skip to content

Tuesday, Apr 6, 2021

Are states able to set their own COVID-19 vaccine documentation requirements?

Lisa Freedland, Gigafact Foundry
yes

The White House on March 29 said it would leave decisions about requiring proof of COVID-19 vaccinations to travel or to attend events to the private sector and the states.

Responses to the idea of requiring digital or paper documentation so far have varied. On the one hand, New York State is already offering a voluntary “Excelsior Pass” for people to use as “digital proof” of a COVID-19 vaccination if required to attend concerts, sporting events or enter other venues. On the other, Florida’s governor has banned businesses in the state from requiring any documentation “certifying an individual’s COVID-19 vaccination status.”

The U.K. government has said it will test a certification system. In Israel, a “green pass” from the health ministry is already being used by vaccinated Israelis to enter restaurants, go to the gym or attend cultural events.

This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

Sources

About fact briefs

Fact briefs are bite-sized, well-sourced explanations that offer clear "yes" or "no" answers to questions, confusions, and unsupported claims circulating online. They rely on publicly available data and documents, often from the original source. Fact briefs are written and published by newsrooms in the Gigafact network.

See all fact briefs

Between 2020 and 2022, under close editorial supervision, Gigafact contracted a group of freelance writers and editors to test the concepts for fact briefs and provide inputs to our software development process. We call this effort Gigafact Foundry. Over the course of these two years, Gigafact Foundry writers published over 1500 fact briefs in response to claims they found online. Their important work forms the basis of Gigafact formats and editorial guidelines, and is available to the public on Gigafact.org. Readers should be aware that while there is still a lot of relevant information to be found, not all fact briefs produced by Gigafact Foundry reflect Gigafact's current methods and standards for fact briefs. If you come across any that you feel are out of date and need to be looked at with fresh eyes, don't hesitate to contact us at support@gigafact.org.

Learn More

Latest Fact Briefs

Be a Friend of facts

Help us fund more great fact briefs like this one.