While the fight against COVID-19 across the globe continues, countries all over the world have been looking to vaccinate their citizens, with some proving more successful than others at this stage. As such, there may soon be a requirement that your vaccination status is something you carry around with you. With this in mind, Google has announced an update to the Passes API in its Pay app that could be of interest to vaccine providers and healthcare officials.

This as users will be able to store a digital vaccine card on Passes. These COVID cards as Google calls them are currently being rolled out in the United States to Android users, with the plan to make it available in other parts of the globe, but assistance from local healthcare organisations and vaccine providers will be needed to make it happen.

“Starting today, developers from healthcare organizations, government agencies and organizations authorized by public health authorities to distribute COVID vaccines and/or tests will have access to these APIs to create a digital version of COVID vaccination or test information. This will roll out initially in the United States followed by other countries,” explained Google in a Developers blog post.

“Once a user stores the digital version of the COVID Card to their device, they will be able to access it via a shortcut on their device home screen, even when they are offline or in areas that have weak internet service,” it adds.

The company also notes that privacy and security are top priorities for this updated API. This is an important aspect to consider as one’s COVID-19 status or that of the country they are from could also be used as a means of discrimination, which has been raised as an issue with COVID passports of late.

Another point that Google is careful to point out, is that information captured within the COVID card will not be shared with Google and will not be used for targeted advertising.

For now this looks to be an Android-only solution, but seeing as how Google Pay is available on iOS, perhaps it will port to that ecosystem too.