German pharmacies started issuing digital vaccination certificates for fully vaccinated people, the Federal Union of German Associations of Pharmacists (ABDA) announced on Monday.
Participating pharmacies could be found via an online platform. Within a few hours, the first 140,000 certificates were already issued by more than 13,000 pharmacies, around two-thirds of all pharmacies in Germany, according to the ABDA.
The online platform was "massively busy," said Thomas Dittrich, Chairman of the German Pharmacists Association (DAV). The old vaccination certificate was still valid and it was not mandatory to immediately get a digital certificate.
From now on, people in Germany would receive their QR codes when receiving the final vaccination. The digital certificate could then be read into the COVID-19 warning app, according to the country's Ministry of Health.
Almost 22 million people in Germany had been fully vaccinated by Sunday, bringing the country's vaccination rate to 26.2 percent, according to the Robert Koch Institute.
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