 Hello everyone, my name is Michael. I work for the San Francisco Public Library and my co-host Brian is here as well too. Hey folks. And today we're going to go over vaccine card and digital record tips. So the topics for today would be we're going to go over a vaccine card and a digital vaccine records, where they get them, different ways of saving them, different ways of displaying your proof and common questions you might ask. So vaccine card and digital vaccine records. So there are a couple of ways for you to show proof that you have gotten your vaccine. So first thing is the vaccine card, which is kind of a physical card given by those administering the vaccine. So if you went to Walgreens or CVS and they gave you the shot, they should have given you like a paper card with your name on it, your birth date. And when did you get the shot and what kind of shot have they given you? The second thing is the digital vaccine record, or sometimes you might hear people saying smart health card. And it is available from the California state website after you received your vaccine. But sometimes you should allow some time for information to process because it might not be immediately available. So I think you should wait at least 14 days after your shots. But sometimes it takes longer as well. So your vaccine card, what is it? Your physical vaccine COVID-19 card is like a paper version of the information about your vaccine shots, such as your name, your date of birth, vaccination dates and type of vaccine you received. It is an official record of the CDC. And on the right hand side of your screen, I have a sample image right here. So it should look very similar to this. So it's a COVID-19 vaccine record and it should have all these filled out as well too. So your smart health card or what is the digital vaccine record? So your digital COVID-19 vaccine record is an electronic version of the information on your physical slash paper vaccine card. So it's going to have the exact same information like your name, date of birth, so all the good stuff. And it also includes that information as a scannable QR code, which is sometimes referred as quick response code. And on the right hand side of your screen, you should see what it looks like right here. So I'm pointing to it with my pointer. So this is a QR code and it should say personal digital COVID-19 vaccine record and have your code right here and all your information should be on the bottom. And it is an official record of the state of California. So if you go to like another state, they might have like a different system and it might look a little bit different. But this is for California. So where to get it? So where do you get these proof of vaccination records? So for like the paper card, you would get it from the entity that is administering your vaccine shots. So like I mentioned earlier, CVS Walgreens, or if you go to General Hospital, depends on where you get your shot, they should give you like a physical paper card. Or if you don't want to carry that around, you can always go to the California Digital Record website on your screen right here. I have the link right here. So it is my vaccine record period CDPH.ca.gov. And don't worry about like copying this address down. So we will repeat it later on as well too. So you will go here to enter in your information and to get your like digital record, which has the QR code and your information as well too. And we will go over that today. So the California Digital Vaccine Record. So you go to the California Digital COVID-19 Vaccine Record website, the website I mentioned earlier before. And I have a QR code here as well too. So if you know how to scan the QR code, you could use your phone and you could scan this QR code right here on your screen. And it should bring you to the link, which is this link right here. And you should be able to go there and enter in your information to get your record. So if you have like a smartphone, you can use it to scan this QR code right here and go to the website. Michael, I'm just going to add that if you go to a bar or restaurant, you'll often see something at the entrance that will show that QR code so that in real time, you can scan it and then show it to the person at the door. Thank you, Ryan. So once you go to that website, you could go to that website on your smartphone or tablet, or you could use your laptop or desktop. And you should get to a screen similar to this, which is on the right hand side of your screen right now. You see some kind of form like this asking you for your first name, last name, date of birth, cell phone or email. And I'm going to ask you to set a four digit pin code. So the reason why they want you to set a four digit pin code is they are going to send you like a link in your text or like a link in the email where you have to click on and you have entered in that pin to get to your actual record. And once you set up all of this and you get the link in your text messages or your email, that link is valid for 24 hours from time you get it. So you will have 24 hours to use that pin to get your vaccine record. Let's say you forget to do it and it's after 24 hours. You don't have to worry about that because you always go back to the website right here and fill this out again and you'll get like another link and you have to choose like another pin and you always get that record again. So you don't have to worry about the 24 hours because you always do it again. And also let's say if you get like another shot, but it's not reflected in your record. So you have to go through this process again as well. So it's not automatically updated. So here is a screenshot of what it might look like if you are receiving the link in your text messages. So you should say thank you for visiting the state of California digital COVID-19 vaccine record, a link to retrieve your COVID-19 vaccine record is valid for 24 hours. So and you should have like a link right below it. And you will click on this if you're on like your cell phone or tablet or you will click on this if you receive this message in your email and it should bring you to your record which should look like this. So it should have this title right here. Should have like a QR code right here which is scannable and you should have your information, your name, date of birth and your doses on the bottom as well. And this is the proof that you have to show people if you let's say you go to like a music concert or you go to like a restaurant and they ask you for proof. This is one way of showing your proof. So now that you know how to get this record, how would you want to save it? So you could download an image from the California digital record website and I will show you how to do that. Or you could take a screenshot of it from a computer if you're accessing this website from a computer. Or you could add the digital record to an app on your smartphone like the clear app or like the Google pay app if you have like an Android phone. Or you could take a photo of a physical vaccine card like with your smartphone and you could show that as proof as well too because sometimes you might not want to show or like carry your actual paper card with you because sometimes it gets damaged. But you could take like a photo of it and you have that on your smartphone or tablet. Or you could take a screenshot of the digital vaccine record from like a mobile device if download is not an option. So downloading an image. So you would go to the California digital COVID-19 website like I mentioned earlier. You fill out your information and once you fill out that information you should get a link to download your COVID-19 vaccine record. So it will show you the record here first but then if you scroll to the bottom you should have the download options as well. So here is what it will look like if you scroll further down on that page with your QR code and your information if you see something similar to this. So on the left hand side of your screen this is an Android view. So if you have like an Android phone this is what you should see. If you have like an iPhone you should see something similar to this on the right hand side of your screen. So I'm going to start from the left. So you should see this link right here says download image. So you will click on this and it will download that image you see before on the previous screen which has your QR code and your name and your birthday and your vaccine shots. And if you have an Android phone then you might see this option as well too. So if your phone is compatible you could save like a record of this not as an image but as like a part of the Google Play app and if you see this then you are compatible. But there are certain requirements that need to be met before your phone is kind of accepted and the minimum requirements is your Android phone should have Android version 5 and above and it should have Google Play services version 21.18 and above. So if you have like an older version like version 4 or you have like the play version like 20 then you might not be able to save it to your phone in the Google Play app and you won't see this link right here. And on the right hand side this is a view from the iPhone. So you should see this option right here download an image and you will click on this and it will download the image to your device. And normally once you click download image on either one of these devices the location of the image would be downloaded to like files folder on your Android or Apple device. And once you go to the files folder you will look for a folder that says downloads and this is where these images will live. So it really depends but normally these are the locations but maybe you might have like a different version of Android or like an older version of iPhone so it really depends but normally this is where they would be. So for Android and Google Pay so like I mentioned earlier you need Android 5 and above and you need Google Play services 21.18 and above. So you would do like you would do before you enter your name date of birth phone number like with your vaccine record on the site and once you do that you see this big save to phone logo and you click on that and you're taken to the Google Pay then you confirm and you'll be prompted to add to your home screen as a shortcut. So once you save it to your Google Pay they're going to ask you do you want this as a shortcut and you say yes and then they will make a shortcut on your home screens where it's like on your shortcuts live so you don't have to go into Google Pay look for it you'll just click on that one icon right there and it'll bring you to your vaccine record. So here are more screenshots of how it might look like to add it to your Google Pay so it might look a little bit different on your phone but this will give you like a general idea. You fill out all your information you'll click on save to phone which is the first screenshot right here and once you click on this you see something similar to this in the middle of your screen this screenshot right here says add a COVID-19 card to your digital device for easy access and once you hit continue and it will be downloaded to your Google Pay then they're going to ask you do you want to add a shortcut to your home screen and you say yes so this will make things a lot easier because you don't have to go into anywhere you just go to your home screen where you have all your shortcuts you click on this and you get right to your record. Hey folks Brian here hope you're all doing well it's a lot of information in the process so here's what it should look like if you're doing it on an iPhone. You'll see that link you might we're using the same image of the link but that's what you get in your text message then you would see the second image and it would give you the option to download so we're including that little image within the image of what it would look like downloading it will automatically put it into the files folder on your iPhone in the downloads folder within there what I do on my phone and then you would see this image on the right what I do on mine is I send it to photos first so that's always on the phone and then I make it a favorite and then I share it with notes and then we'll see that on the next screen so that square with the with the arrow that's kind of the universal apple symbol for sharing so when you're looking at the image on your phone you look for that image on the bottom and then like I said what I do is best practice I add it to my photos app and then within and then I make it a favorite which is that little heart on the bottom which we're not showing right now and then I send it also to notes and when you send it to notes it'll look like the middle one first and you can see there you're you're saving it as a note it'll give it a generic name at first and you can go in later and give it a name like I did here digital vaccine card sample but one of the key things to do is once you have it in there in the notes app you can pin it and that's that second icon in the middle with a like a push pin and then on the right you'll see that's what it looks like it'll be above all the other notes and so if you want to easily and quickly access your digital vaccine card all you do is open up notes and then it'll be right there and then you can tap it and you'll show it and once again it only includes the information that is on your digital vaccine card your your name your date of birth and the type of when and what type of vaccine you received so like I mentioned earlier screenshots so when we created this course there was no option to download an image from the california website but now they did include that option which is a lot easier but sometimes you might want to take a screenshot anyway or you might want to know how to take a screenshot and there are a couple of ways of taking screenshots it depends on what kind of device you have so one option is there might be an option in settings so you find the option in taking the screenshot within settings and this is for android devices so you might see this you might not see this so it really depends on which version you have and what kind of phone you have because there are a lot of manufacturers for android phones and each company they might have like a different way of showing things or they might not have that option but if you don't have that option a common way of taking a screenshot from your android device is you would use the volume down button and the power button so you tap on these two buttons at the same time and you should be able to take a screenshot on android device but if you have an iphone then you're pressing the side button the volume up button and this will be able to give you the option to take a screenshot on the iphone and if these options are not available or you prefer not to do these options then you might want to download a third-party app which allows you to take a screenshot and you will have to go to the google play store if you have like an android device or if you have like an iphone or ipad you have to go to the apple app store and you just do like a simple search for like screenshot or screen capture and once you do that search you should be getting to like a list of all these apps that are available and you will look through these apps to see which one would kind of fit your needs or if they have good reviews or not then you would want to download them and use those apps to take like a screenshot so ways of displaying your vaccine record so like i mentioned earlier you might have like a physical card so you could put that physical card in like a protected sleeve and if you could go to a restaurant like a music venue that you could show the person at the door your physical card and this should be proof that you already have the shot or you could take a screenshot of your digital vaccine record so like i mentioned earlier you could take a screenshot of that record with your QR code which is like this and you could show that as proof or if you prefer not to show the physical card then you could use your smartphone or tablet and you open up the camera app and you could take a photo of your physical card and you could save that photo onto your device and then you show that photo as proof of your vaccination status or you could go on your smartphone and you download your vaccine record to an app like on google pay and then you could use that to show your proof as well so like i mentioned earlier you could take like a screenshot of your digital vaccine record or like a photo of your physical card you just open up the screenshot from your device and normally if you use like your camera app then it should be in your photo gallery so you will look in your photo gallery to look for that photo and you show that as proof but it really depends on what kind of device you have because i think certain devices they don't have the gallery but they have google photos which is kind of like standard on like an Android device and it should be saved there as well too and once you're on there you might have like a lot of photos and you might now want to look through all your photos so you might want to favorite your that photo so it will stay like in your favorite section so you don't have to look through all your photos to find that one photo so you will look for the favorite option on your device it might look a little bit different so you might want to look around on your screen to see it might look like a star it might look like a check mark so it really depends but once you select favorite and it will be saved to your favorite section then you have more easy access to that photo instead of looking through all your photos so um just released in beta which means it's not um you know like uh fully ready for prime time apple has released ios 15 um and when uh when and if you download it to your ios device your your your iphone um you'll be able to add this information securely they say um to your wallet and health apps um so that's coming soon that would be another hopefully easy and secure way for you to display this information on your iphone and once again it's it's only in like a pre-release now you could download it and use it but a lot of folks will wait till they get all the bugs out okay so if you have any questions here is a link to their FAQ website where you would go to and they should answer like most of the common questions that you might ask or if you need further assistance they do have a phone number where you could call them and you can ask them and these are the hours right here but normally you will go to their website because things might change their hours might change and their website will have the most updated information as well so i mentioned earlier um if you go to their website you enter in your information you'll get your record but sometimes you might enter in your information and you might not get your record so things may happen like a letter might have been mistyped so they might not be able to find you but you will have to give them a call or you could have to contact them through like another way and they will help you fix it. There's a suggestion from someone which we thought about mentioning is not only can you do a favorites but you can create an album in photos and give it a name such as vaccine and then it would only have that image in it and that will thank you Tori for that tip and Michael says I downloaded the info but was not able to save the QR code and can't seem to get it back so what do you suggest Michael that he just do it again? It sounds like it saved the image somewhere on your device so you might have to look for the image it depends on what kind of device you have but normally you will look for like the folder icon on your device if it's an android or like an iphone once you look for the folder icon you'll look for the download like folder within the folder icon and you should see like a list of all the recent downloads it might be near top it might be near the bottom so you'll look through that if you have like a lot of downloads that you have to look through one of each but if you go through all of that and you don't find it then you would still have to go back to the website if it's within 24 hours of you submitting your request you should still have that link in your text message or in your email and you would just click on that and you should be able to get back to the record but if you it's been over 24 hours then you have to go back to the website and re-enter your information and re-get your QR code again and it's pretty easy to do it again in fact yesterday I think I did it twice in testing this out and also when you're looking for the file on my device it was a png file so it was .png and it has a kind of cryptic gobbledygook kind of a name it's not going to say vaccine card will have some kind of random or generated number on it and we had another three-part question from frank and he says why would you use it in google pay as opposed to something else doesn't really want to use google pay so once again we covered options we want to mention again how you can save it without using google pay on an android device yeah so it is one of the options so for example if you use google pay you have the option of kind of creating a shortcut to that google pay record onto your home screen where you like all your like icons live so you just click on that it will bring you directly to the record but if you download the image onto your phone or tablet and let's say um you have like android device then once you download the image onto your device you have to go to your folders you have to go look for your downloads and that's where it lives so it's like another step so that's that's one option it's about too so you don't have to do it in google pay but it's just one option for you to consider um but there once again there are other ways to do it you don't have to use google pay to um to save it to your device to your android device yeah so if you have like android device you could use this but you don't have to you could just download the image from here and you have your record saved to your device without using the google pay so for me i actually have in my notes and one reason that one thing that's kind of handy about notes is you can add things um to a file so i have my digital vaccine record on it but i also have a photo of my actual physical card as well as i've also put a copy of my driver's license in there too they may or may not accept it but i want to have everything in one place where i could display it um to get any entry somewhere so i think i have the instructions right here open notes app to create a new note you hit the camera icon above the keyboard and choose option of scan documents then you scan the front and back of your vaccine card and swipe left to the right on the note and you can locate the pin option to pin it so it'll be on top of your list where easy apps later and to answer the question earlier about like how secure is this once you go through the process you add it to the google pay you should see a disclaimer page where it will tell you what exactly is your information going through like what who handles your information and you can look through the details right there and if you don't agree you could like accept so you won't have to use it but if you do agree that it will let you move on to the next step where it adds you adds the record to google pay but um on the short note it's telling you that it's using that to create the record for you but the record it's being saved to your device only so it's not being saved on any servers anywhere so it's only being saved to your device so if you lose your device or if you change on your phone to like a new phone then it's not saved anywhere else you have to redo the process again to download that record to your device and like if you have more than one device then you have to download it separately to each of those devices so it's not being saved anywhere on any servers it's being saved to your device so and it also mentions that you have to have the screen lock so every time you try to open up like the google play record of your vaccine record it will ask for the screen lock first before it actually displays for anyone to look at and another app that we took a look at is clear which is also used for travel and i started down the the road on that the process because i noticed some of the venues in san francisco are using it to gain entry to say a music show but it seemed to get a little it was it was talking about biometric information and things like that but that's an app that it's free for you to use for this purpose and is supposed to be secure but there are some steps in in utilizing it also if the question about security was about the website i mean it is the official department of public health for california and they're only you'd even notice how it's sometimes hard to do this right so they are making it secure and like f and the code is no longer good after 24 hours so we can't speak for them but it seems like it's a secure site to you and once again and that information not only is it secure but it's also a limited amount of information it's only your name your birth date and the vaccination dates and what it is it doesn't have other information about you in it either in the qr code or or there it's what's actually on your the physical card that you get also on the left side you when you see the link that link once again deactivates after 24 hours and the one we're looking at isn't the full link so i didn't put up in you know the link that we received so that's a truncated version of it so as you can tell from here is his name date of birth and though so there's no like social security number there's no driver's license just only these information on here someone else was having difficulty but i said that the the pin is invalid and has done it multiple times so i'm not sure what we can recommend other than trying it again and you know you know sometimes there are glitches but um go through the steps make sure that you remember the pin that you use you're going to set a four-digit number and then and then that's the number you're going to put in when you get the link and also remember when you're on this page on your phone or tablet or on your computer you're setting the four-digit pin but if you you're using like a smartphone and your screen's kind of small and you're typing in the pin number on with your keyboard sometimes you might be typing like a one or two but then your finger might be hitting the number right next to three and you might not be paying attention or you might not be able to see it so it might be that so once you get the link in your text or email and you're entering the pin again and it's incorrect because maybe you're typing in like one number like to the left or to the right so it's good to double check or it's good to type slower and see what the actual number is when you're typing it in so this is once again the same QR code which is the digit like kind of an advanced barcode that you that will take you directly to the my vaccine record site and then you can seal the deal from there. So right now you if you have like a smartphone you could open up your smartphone's camera and it depends on what kind of smartphone you have so I know for iPhones you could open up your camera app and you could point your camera to the screen right here to the QR code right here and it should display this link right here which you could click on and it will bring you to the digital vaccine record website or if you have an Android phone you might open up the camera and you might have to select the option of photo or QR code and if you have the option to select QR code then you point your camera to your screen right here to the QR code on your screen and it should display that link as well and you could click on that as well and it will bring you to the next screen. Someone else asked what happens if someone scans presumably it's scanning the QR code for the digital vaccine record and the information that anyone does see when they're using the valid app or device to do this is only the information that's on your digital vaccine card so it doesn't have other medical information. So we went over how to get this digital record right here onto your smartphone tablet but if you want to print this out you can as well too so you could send this to your little printer or you could come to the library and you print as well and you have like a printed form of this record so you don't have to have it on your smartphone tablet you have it on a paper form and you carry that around with you as well too. And it should be accepted just as if the original vaccine card is there any difference between a screenshot and downloaded image of the QR code? That is a good question. I've done both and they looked identical to me. When you do a screenshot of the of it it sometimes includes information at the top and bottom like you know kind of the date you know the top of your the menus on your phone so and when it was downloaded I noticed it didn't have that at all but the QR code was still crisp and the same and the information was the same when I tested both ways. And also it really depends on how big your screen is so if you have like a bigger screen and you take a screenshot of it it might be able to take a screenshot of the whole record if you're seeing small enough it might be cutting off like right here I'm using my pointer right here so if it cuts off right here and you're taking a screenshot it might be taking a screenshot of just here to here but then on the bottom right here you might not be able to see it so that will be not be a part of your screenshot so that's like one difference from screenshot and download once once you download the image from the website it will include everything on here so all your information so you're not worried about anything cutting off so thank you everyone for joining us today for this session I hope it was informative. Thanks folks.