Over 650,000 people have already registered for the Belgian certificate, which connects to the EU’s Digital Covid Certificate and became available on Wednesday morning.
Belgian residents with plans to travel within the European Union this summer can request a coronavirus certificate to prove that they are Covid-safe.
"At the moment there are about 9 million certificates available. On Wednesday, 1.4 million people contacted a service or went online about the certificate, of which many wanted to test the app for example," said Barbara Van Den Haute of Digitaal Vlaanderen, which is responsible for the digitalisation of public services in Flanders.
This number includes people who were not yet eligible to get a certificate.
“We are already launching the platform now so that we can test it for two weeks and issue a lot of certificates in time,” Van Den Haute told VRT NWS.
The paper or digital version of the certificate will prove that a person has been fully vaccinated against the coronavirus, with an EMA-approved vaccine, has recently taken a negative Covid-19 test, or has a recovery certificate that proves that they have recovered from Covid-19.
This means people can have more than one certificate because they will receive a separate certificate for each test and each vaccination (both the first and second shot).
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The CovidSafeBE-app was downloaded 400,000 times, according to reports from De Standaard. Some technical problems were reported, not with the application itself, but with the identity app itsme, as this became overloaded at a certain point.
The EU-wide system will officially be launched on 1 July, meaning that "from then, people can immediately use the certificate,” Van Den Haute said.
To get your certificate, download the CovidSafeBE-app or go to the mijngezondheid.be website. A vaccination certificate can also be sent to you by post by calling the helpdesk: 078 78 78 50 (for Flemish residents), 071 31 34 93 (for Walloon residents) and 02 214 19 19 (for people living in the Brussels-Capital Region).
