New York State discontinuing Excelsior Pass Plus, the COVID-19 vaccination passport

The Excelsior Pass app, a digital relic of the pandemic,... — The Excelsior Pass app, a digital relic of the pandemic, has rarely been used during the past two years. Credit: AP

By Yancey Royyancey.roy@newsday.com @yanceyroyUpdated July 1, 2023

ALBANY – New York’s Excelsior Pass Plus, the digital COVID-19 passport that displayed vaccination status on your phone and later became a target of critics for its ballooning cost, is going away.

The state Health Department posted notice on the state’s COVID-19 website saying the “Excelsior Pass Plus (EPP) and the NYS Wallet App will no longer be available” as of July 28.

You can leave the app on your phone. You should be able to open it and display your vaccination status, the state says. However, if the app fails, technical support won’t be available to help fix the problem or to continue to use the app.

New Yorkers who loaded the app on their phones and enabled notifications likely already received messages announcing the upcoming end of the digital tool.

The action corresponds with the official end of the state’s public health emergency, May 11, and the phaseout of various initiatives, such as exposure notifications and routinely updated infection rates. The Health Department also cited the “reduced demand for access to digital COVID-19 test and vaccine records through the epass.ny.gov portal.”

Come July 28, the state will stop providing technical support for the app or releasing new versions. NYS Wallet will be removed from app stores.

Data collected on the app will continue to be “private and secure,” the department said, adding that in the future, residents should access vaccination records through a health care provider.

The Excelsior Pass Plus and the NYS Wallet apps were ushered in by then-Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo in spring 2021 and hailed as the first of their kind in the nation. Coming a year after the pandemic hit and many activities were shut down, Cuomo said they would be key to jump-starting the economy.

The original cost was projected at $2.5 million. But that quickly escalated – to $17 million to $27 million to $64 million – as the Cuomo administration expanded its vision to include much more, such as driver’s licenses and other health data.

The contracts also have been linked a shake-up in the administration of Gov. Kathy Hochul, who succeeded Cuomo. In March, Hochul forced out acting budget director Sandra Beattie on the same day the governor asked the state inspector general to review contracts and procurement procedures related to the Excelsior Pass. Beattie hasn’t been accused of wrongdoing and the inspector general has yet to issue findings.

Although vaccine mandates are largely gone, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that anyone 6 years and older receive an updated – sometimes called bivalent – Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccine, whether or not they previously received a COVID-19 vaccine. Children 6 months to 5 years old may need multiple doses to be up to date, depending on their age and the number of previous doses.

People 65 and older may get a second bivalent shot four or more months after the first updated vaccine, and anyone who is moderately and severely immunocompromised can get an additional dose two or more months later, and, after consulting with a health care provider, potentially additional updated doses.

With David Olson