Although the unified vaccination network IT system ViVaT has been operating in Latvia since the end of April, it is not yet ready to issue an electronically readable certificate about being vaccinated or having recovered from Covid-19. It is precisely the lack of such functionality that currently prevents vaccinated people from watching the hockey championship games in person. The Ministry of Health promises that downloadable and printable vaccination certificates will be available from June 1.
ViVaT (vienotais vakcinācijas tīkls, unified vaccination network) is an IT system that coordinates the calendars of Covid-19 vaccinators, records that a person has been vaccinated, and maintains the current vaccination status of the population and compliance with the priority groups. Introducing the ViVaT system, the Information Technology Coordinator of the Vaccination Bureau Māris Dreimanis said that the total cost of ViVaT is 1,450,330 euros. The development of the system cost 817,500 euros, including the development of the core of the vaccination IT solution - 473,352 euros, and integration with the IT systems of medical institutions - 232,320 euros. Other costs include server infrastructure rental, the workforce for the National Health Service (NHS) system maintenance, as well as digital notifications for the population. M. Dreimanis emphasized that the cost of the project was 72 cents per vaccinated person, assuming that 1,200,000 people would be vaccinated. This is on average less than the cost of such a system in other countries. ViVaT was developed by the leading Latvian IT companies: SIA ZZ Dats, which has subcontracted SIA Kleintech Services, SIA Mobilly, SIA Blue Bridge Technologies, SIA Meditec, SIA Rixcat.
In March, the NHS concluded a contract worth 61,600 euros (excluding VAT) with SIA Latvijas Mobilais Telefons for the definition and analysis of Covid-19 vaccination business processes to ensure the development of vaccination IT solutions, and in April with SIA ViVaT for the security and usability audit, as well as consulting during the development of the system for 79,000 euros, excluding VAT.
Explaining why it is not possible to watch the IIHF World Championship in person at the moment, the Ministry of Health emphasized that the Ministries of Health and Interior are currently developing IT solutions for issuing and verifying EU digital Covid-19 certificates and this work has not been completed. The development of the solution is in accordance with the implementation plan provided in the information report “Possible motivating agents for vaccination against Covid-19 infection”, which plans that only from June 1 it will be technically possible to issue certificates of vaccination or recovery from Covid-19, as well as check the authenticity of these certificates on a special website. However, as the Ministry of Health emphasizes, the inspection procedure in this case is not intended and is not suitable for use in mass events. "If the organizers of the IIHF World Championship want to use the solution available from 1 June this year, they should take into account that each visitor's inspection can take up to one minute, so the organizers must provide a sufficient number of controllers to check all visitors' certificates within a reasonable time. Given that this solution is not intended for mass events, the Ministry of Health also cannot take responsibility for the stability of its operation under such conditions. Therefore, we cannot recommend checking the authenticity of certificates on the special website as a solution on which to base the verification of being vaccinated or having recovered from Covid-19 of spectators in all championship games. The Ministry of Health has not assessed whether the organizer could develop its own IT solution for certificate verification,” explains the Ministry of Health.
The Covid-19 vaccination and recovery confirmation certificate - the EU Covid-19 certificate - will be available in Latvia only on June 15.
"The fact of vaccination can be seen in both E-veselība portal and manavakcina.lv, but a solution that will allow this information to be securely used and verified is still under development," a representative of the Vaccination Project Bureau explained at a meeting of the Saeima Public Expenditure and Audit Committee last week, answering the accusations of the MPs regarding the delay in the implementation of the decisions of the Saeima. Namely, already on May 20, the Saeima instructed the government to immediately develop procedures to allow those vaccinated against Covid-19 and those who had recently recovered from the disease to watch the IIHF World Championship in Riga.
At the same time, Saeima MP Krišjānis Feldmans is confused about why such high-level IT specialists, who created and maintain ViVaT, are not able to quickly create a simple system that, for example, can identify from a personal identity number whether the person has been vaccinated or not (with yes/no or green/red). According to him, creating such a tool is taught to 9th grade students.
The National Centre for Education ensures the development of curricula in general education and supervises its implementation. Until yesterday, Neatkarīgā had not yet received a response from this center whether the development of such a tool is taught in middle school. In the sample of the Computer Science subject program for the 1st-9th grade found in the repository of study resources created by this center, it can be seen that website development is taught in the 7th grade, while in the 8th grade the students create an informative web page where different files can be uploaded and their data is displayed differently depending on the content of the files, but in the 9th grade they learn how to independently plan and implement a programming project.
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