MADISON, Wis. — Some day, a lot of people will look back at their photos from the spring of 2021 and see themselves holding up a small white piece of paper: their COVID-19 vaccination record card.

What You Need To Know

  • Keep your COVID-19 vaccination card somewhere safe

  • Take a photo and keep it on your phone or computer for future reference

  • If you lose your card, contact the provider who gave you the shots, or access state record systems like the Wisconsin Immunization Registry

In the meantime, what do you do with them? The advice is relatively simple: keep it somewhere safe.

“Hang on to it,” said Dr. Matt Anderson, senior medical director, primary care, at UW Health in Madison. “It may be relevant in the future for some sort of governmental or public health need. But right now, there’s nothing else they’d be expected to do with it.”

The card could eventually be be a useful tool to for travel, entering buildings or attending events. But we’re not there quite yet.

That’s why both Anderson and Mo Kharbat at SSM Health in Madison keep their cards at home.

“Until we get to a point where we want to show it to other, say for example to enter buildings or go see others, if we get to a point like that, then I will certainly keep it in my wallet when it becomes something I carry with me like my ID on my badge,” said Kharbat, SSM’s vice present of pharmacy services. “But until then, I keep it in a safe place at home.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggests taking a photo of the card and keeping it where you can access it, including a mobile phone, computer or laptop.

If you lose your card, the CDC says people can contact the provider who gave you the shot or access your state’s electronic immunization information system.

“We certainly have the Wisconsin Immunization Registry here, so if they lose that card there will be a record of it,” Anderson said. “Hang on to it. It maybe that it’s revenant in the future for some sort of governmental or public health need.”

Kharbat says while it may not seem like much yet, the importance of the record may grow in the future.

“It could be symbolic in the beginning, but eventually it will be important to keep and show others as we wait for a more formal registry across the country and perhaps more of a global registry as well,” he said.