Vaccine Passports - What we Know
25 November 2021
First the disclaimer: We are making a lot of assumptions here and we have tried our best to point these out, but please understand that this will depend entirely on the final rules that the Government sets in place. We are also assuming your club will be deemed vaccinated under the traffic light system.
However, it seems that the approach thus far is to let everyone decide on their own systems, with the onus on ensuring everyone in the club is vaccinated. And if they aren’t and you get caught, expect big fines, and most likely a serious backlash from all the vaccinated members.
Clearly the goal is to introduce a process for ensuring that this can be achieved with minimal disruption to members, and not much extra work for staff.
With that said, lets assume that as a club, we are able to store the vaccine status and expiry of members in the club’s member database for future visits. The first step to consider is how to get this info from your members.
The most obvious way is as members visit, someone sights the vaccine pass and makes a note of the member name and expiry date of vaccine, for entering into the database later. If your system allows it, you could be entering this directly into the system with a laptop at the door. Ideally this could be done at the bar straight into the pos system member database, but by then they are already in the club so theoretically you would be breaching the requirement for everyone in the club to be vaccinated.
You may also be able to accept a scan by email or through a website page, which means you could get ahead of the curve and send something out to members asking them to send it in electronically.
Please bear in mind that you will need to also have a process in place for checking visitors and guests.
The actual saving into your database will require an extra field setup in the system to store the vaccine expiry date. Ideally your system could match the expiry date with the actual date and tell you if they are expired or not, or this could be a manual check. The important thing is that the expiry can be somehow checked before entry. Have a chat with your member database people (whether its your pos system storing members or another system) about the best way to facilitate this.
Once you have the vax status saved in the database for your members, you will require some way of reading and checking it as members make future visits.
You could have a sticker that you add to the existing membership card if you are happy that will be secure enough. Bearing in mind that the fine for unvaxed people in the club could be $12K.
We are speaking with our developers about building this into the digital membership card on our app, for clubs that have provided us with their member list.
Much as I have not been a fan of automatic door systems in the past as it locks potential new members out from visiting easily, there is clearly a place for them in these times. We are looking at options for this so if you already have a working solution you are happy with, please let me know and we will share this info with other clubs.
For those clubs with infosign entry systems, we understand that they already have a solution being developed so have a chat with them. We are also trialling our nationwide member list (again, for clubs that have shared their member list with us) at Whangamata and this will be available soon to other clubs with infosign systems.
If you are ready for the latest high tech and want the simplest solution possible, the ingenious team at COMS have come up with a facial recognition system which asks you to scan in at the door with your vaccine certificate. It then keeps a record that you are vaccinated so next time it just looks at you and knows you can come in. There are a couple of cameras in the bar which alert staff if anyone didn’t get scanned in or aren’t vaxxed. The other bonus is then they can visit other venues with this system and it will recognise them there too. Here is a short video showing how it works - https://vimeo.com/644135061
Please contact Karen at COMS for more information – karen@coms.net.nz
