BUFFALO, N.Y. (WBEN) - New York State's Excelsior Pass is unable to verify the vaccination status of some people who are fully vaccinated.
When going onto either the Excelsior Pass through your smart phone or through the state's website, you will first be asked to enter your name, date of birth, and zip code. After submitting that information, another page will ask you to verify when and where you received your doses plus which vaccine you received.
However, for some people, they can't get beyond the first step. They will receive a message that says the state cannot find their pass.
James Hyzy from the Town of Tonawanda is among those who have run into this issue. He received his second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine on April 21, which means he would have been considered fully vaccinated on May 5 because it takes two weeks to be considered fully vaccinated.
"They want to find out if you got your shots through the state," Hyzy said. "If you got it through the state, it looks like it will take you to a deeper troubleshooting step. If you don't get your shot from the state, you get a 'none of the above' point. At that point, it just says your problem is with the site you got your vaccine. Please contact them to have it rectified."
Hyzy did not say which pharmacy he received it from, though he said there wasn't much effort from that pharmacy to fix the issue.
"They said 'the problem is with the state, it's not our problem'," Hyzy said. "I feel like I've hit a dead end."
According to the New York Health Department, vaccine administrators and testing providers are directly responsible for entering COVID-19 immunization and testing data into the government database. Those administrators must have staff available to review and correct the data they input. NYSDOH said any administrator issues that are confirmed and flagged to the state are immediately looked into.
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"Every day, the first-in-the-nation Excelsior Pass is being leveraged by hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers and New York businesses alike to support the safe reopening of New York State, exactly as the proven, secure, and innovative App was designed to do," a spokesman from the governor's office said in a written statement to WBEN. "Department of Health guidance is clear: all NYS vaccine administrators must be submitting vaccination data to the secure New York State and City immunization databases and have staff available to review and correct the data these administrators input, if data entry issues are identified. Demand for Excelsior Pass - and getting back to the things New Yorkers love and miss - is here, and providers have had months to ensure they are submitting this data correctly and in-real time, and must meet the State in this moment."
If you run into this issue, NYSDOH says to first check to make sure you're entering your information correctly. The next step is to reach out to wherever you received the vaccine from to confirm the information. If you run into further issues, you can contact the state's Excelsior Help Desk at 844-699-7277 from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily.
Assemblywoman Karen McMahon told reporters earlier this month that she had an issue with her vaccination status. It's not immediately known if her issue was resolved.
"I think as with all these new technologies and new programs, they just have to work out the kinks," McMahon said on May 6. "I'll keep trying. I haven't made a call to a hotline yet to get an Excelsior Pass, but I'm pretty confident they'll figure it out eventually."
The state launched the Excelsior Pass in a partnership with IBM in March.