Where do you turn if your COVID record is wrong?

During the pandemic, many of us got used to ‘checking-in’ our locations in public spaces, such as the library or when out for dinner. Many of us needed to interact with the NHS App to demonstrate our COVID vaccination status when we booked in to have our boosters, travel by plane and even to visit relatives in care. But where do you turn when your records are wrong?

We had a flurry of calls and emails from residents who realised they had missing or incorrectly entered vaccination records. This was preventing them from being able to book for second and booster doses of the COVID vaccination, or get hold of their NHS vaccination passes, and they were struggling to resolve the issue on their own. 

We contacted our local COVID vaccination operations team who introduced us to both the regional and national vaccine operations centres. Both teams recognised that this was becoming a far-reaching issue. It was also undermining trust in the NHS vaccination programme. 

We worked with the system performance leads in each of the centres and provided evidence of incorrect or missing records. Thanks to our evidence, they were able to identify the issues causing the inaccuracies and resolve them.  

In an impressive demonstration of collaborative working, action by the regional and national teams led to improvements at the National Vaccine Data Resolution Service, and calls to us about this issue dropped significantly.