It is time, once again, to whine about how much a can of Bud Light goes for at Madison Square Garden.
This weekend New York State launched a first of its kind coronavirus passport app, dubbed the Excelsior Pass. The word excelsior is Latin for “higher” and has been the state motto since 1778. So what better way to secure a spot on the lawn to catch the Dave Matthews Band at SPAC?
The app (for iOS and Android), similar to ones used to board airplanes, will display the holder’s COVID-related information, either detailing the date of a most recent inoculation, or a negative PCR test result. It is currently not tied-in directly to ticketing services, so gaining entry to a game or show looks to be a “two-boop” process for now. Additional identification (like a driver’s license) will also be needed to prove the name on your phone is actually you.
According to a statement issued by Governor Andrew Cuomo‘s office, the “proven, secure technology” was developed in conjunction with IBM, and it will fast-track an economic reopening for concerts, sports events, theaters, wedding receptions and other catered affairs.
Manhattan’s Madison Square Garden and Albany’s Times-Union Center have announced they will implement the new technology’s use, and other venues should be getting on board, too. For now, however, only venues with a 10,000 person capacity will open up, and a 10 percent limit still applies, as does social distancing measures, mask-wearing, and temperature-taking.
A separate link exists for businesses who want to encourage use, though it is opt-in. This will certainly be a boon for small shops and restaurants managing their entry points as we get into summer, or it might just lead to a series of civil liberties headaches. (Likely a mix!)
Other open-source tools are in development (one is used by Walmart’s pharmacies) and a report in USA Today suggests that the Excelsior Pass will evolve as these new systems are put into place elsewhere in the country. “It’s really the nerds getting together in kind of a nerd U.N. to piece this all together,” Linux Foundation of Public Health executive director Brian Behlendorf explained to the paper about the brain trust of programmers piecing this together.
Unauthenticated reviews on the app thus far range from “quick and easy” to “worse than useless.”
Vaccination rates in New York vary from county to county throughout the state. The lightly-populated Hamilton County boasts 36 percent of all residents as fully vaccinated, while Allegany County has only nine percent. Manhattan is at 19 percent, with Brooklyn at 11, The Bronx at 12, and Queens at 13.
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