Nahh those are the people who got twenty two doses in an single shot
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thanks the passport option worked.
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The Irish one works to store the certificate and display the European QR, https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.covidtracker.hse&hl=en_IE&gl=US
Like other reported, name (long) comes out a little weird but perfectly readable.
edit: removed old share links
The german app shows my chinese Name.
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I downloaded the certificate but noticed a couple of problems:
-
Although my full name and passport number is correctly shown on the PDF under the Basic Information section, when I import the QR code into a COVID certificate app (such as the Swiss one), my name is shown incorrectly in the app. IE the just first letter of my surname is shown first, then a space and the rest of the surname, then only the first 3 letters of my first name and no middle name.
I expect this would cause problems if I needed to use the QR code to get in somewhere, because the name on the COVID certifcate app doesn’t exactly match the name on my ID/Passport.
Not sure if the details are wrongly encoded in the QR code, or some kind of database lookup is being done when I import the certificate and the wrong info is coming from there. -
The other issue is that only one batch number is shown. It does say I’ve had 2/2 (2 of 2) jabs and the type is correct, but only the last batch number and date is shown on the certificate.
Is anyone else seeing these problems?
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yup, similar for me, a bit different for others. See the last few replies on this thread.
Actually, the small bit of software developer left inside me says this might be some issue on the TW side: either with how the “English” names were entered into the NHI system, or with how correctly entered names are handled when issuing the digital certificate.
Maybe @au or @fifieldt know who to contact in order to work together on improving this (if possible at all from the TW software side)? I guess all we need is see some of our forum members’ input (passport names, names on NHI card) and their output (certificate and shown name after import in European apps) to figure out where the issue is and whether it’s easy to solve.
In case I can find good documentation of the data formats I’ll try to analyze this by looking on my own data first.
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OK, here is the spec of the EU certificate’s encoding scheme. Basically: Inside the QR code is some text, encoded in Base45. Here is an online Base45 decoder.
If you scan the QR code and paste the resulting garbled “text” into that online decoder, you will get a readable text like this example from Germany:
{
"1": "DE", // issuing country
"4": 1655209933, // expires at
"6": 1623673933, // issued at
"-260": {
"1": {
"v": [
{
"ci": "URN:UVCI:01DE/IZ12345A/21E0JXD7UQY6ECLM3WT7YF#8",
"co": "DE",
"dn": 2,
"dt": "2021-04-01",
"is": "Robert Koch-Institut",
"ma": "ORG-100031184",
"mp": "EU/1/20/1507",
"sd": 2,
"tg": "840539006",
"vp": "1119349007"
}
],
"dob": "1964-08-12",
"nam": {
"fn": "Mustermann",
"gn": "Erika",
"fnt": "MUSTERMANN",
"gnt": "ERIKA"
},
"ver": "1.0.0"
}
}
}
The meaning of these fields is explained here.
In the name field “nam” there are the following sub-fields:
fn = Family name
gn = given name
fnt = Standardised (transliterated) family name
gnt = Standardised (transliterated) given name
When I look at “my” TW vaccination certificate QR code, and use the example of “John Edward Doe”, then my NHI card says:
DOE
JOHN EDWARD
And the name fields looks like this:
"fn" : "D"
"gn" : "OE JOHN ED"
"fnt" : "DOE<JOHN<EDWARD"
"gnt" : ""
Conclusion: For my case the “fn” and “gn” fields in the certificate QR code are not filled correctly. This issue is definitely on the TW side - but I can’t tell if the raw data from NHI is wrong already, or the encoding into the QR code has a problem.
A possible workaround would be to use an app that uses the standardized (transliterated) name fields to import the TW QR code.
Maybe some of you could post here (or write to me by PM) what data you got in these fields, and what’s on your NHI cards? For the sake of anonymity I’d suggest using use the same example name of “John Edward Doe” and for mandarin “無名氏”.
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That sounds like a cock-up lol.
I just did it, just for fun. This is what I got:
"fn" : "J"
"gn" : "OHN EDWARD DOE"
"fnt" : "DOE<JOHN<EDWARD"
"gnt" : ""
As in, the “fn” field contains the first letter of my first name and the “gn” field contains everything else (the rest of my first name, my middle name, and my surname, in that order).
The name on my NHI card is:
DOE JOHN
EDWARD
As in, my surname and first name on the first line and my middle name on the next line by itself (I’m not sure whether that’s really intended to be two separate lines/fields, or if it’s just entered as a single field of “Doe John Edward” that wraps onto the next line when too long - in my case, my surname and first name take up all of the space available to the left of the photo).
I don’t have a Chinese name registered with the government, because just using “An-de-lu of Taiwan” (安德魯) seemed ridiculous.
So it seems that there’s not even internal consistency - mine is entered differently from yours?
Incidentally, this reminds me of signing up for an internet contract in China ages ago:
(This is what the clerk came up with when presented with a passport with my surname on one line, my first and middle names on another line, and “British Citizen” on another line. The (Chinese) mind boggles. 
)
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I’m wondering if my twenty two doses is going to be a problem when I need to travel. Hopefully I won’t meet a jobsworth.
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Oh, and another weird thing I just noticed - the passport number listed on my certificate is way out of date. That field seems to have been populated with an old passport number I got replaced in December 2018, which is over a year before I applied for an ARC/gold card and almost two years before I registered for NHI.
If I had to guess, the number there must have been taken from the passport number I had when I first entered Taiwan in 2016 or when I registered for a UI number in 2017 (now my ARC number).
That’s mildly annoying. Has that happened to anyone else?
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Just checked mine and the passport number is the latest. Everything on mine is correct except number of doses.
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Have you changed your passport number since first getting an ARC in Taiwan? I guess that’s the crucial point here.
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Since getting my first arc, yes. Since getting my latest one three years ago, no.
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nah… they’ll just roll out the red carpet.
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Oh, not same as my case. Interesting. That possibly points to a data entry issue with the NHI card, PLUS an issue with the vaccination encoding program. Nice.
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I was just gonna say - don’t forget we’re in Taiwan.
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Mine works in the EU covid tracker app (Ireland ). Only thing is it just displays my Chinese name right now , although it has Chinese and English on the Taiwan cert. Going to have to figure that out in the EU.
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In my case the entry is like this:
"fn" : "D" "gn" : "OE JON" "fnt" : "DOE<JONATHAN<EDWARD" "gnt" : ""
Note the short and long versions of the first name.
It seems that it’s picking up my shortened name from somewhere, even though the full name is in the record. (I assume it’s not simply truncating the ‘gn’ field as @olm shows in his example, because in mine, only the 3 characters of the first name are shown and none of the middle name).
What might be relevant for my case is that I had the jabs before I had an NHI card, so I wonder if they were using the hospital’s record to fill in some of this data. I originally registered at the hospital using my shortened first name many years ago when I was a tourist. The record at the hospital was updated and corrected a few months ago when I got NHI, but that was after my two COVID jabs so perhaps the old data was still in my record when it was added to the national vaccine database.
Did you ever register with the hospital where you got the jabs using your old passport number? Is it possible that this is where the out of date info is coming from for you too?
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So it seems we have three different answers from three different people now haha.
That’s a good point! I did actually - this was at NTUH, and I’d previously registered there with the first passport number.
But…that doesn’t really explain the observed issue either! The thing is that, although I originally registered there with the old number, the staff entered the number incorrectly (10 digits instead of 9, with one of the numbers duplicated). So that was the number initially on my records for a year or so until I updated it to the correct old number, and I then updated it again to the new number way before getting vaccinated. So if that’s the explanation, they would have needed to use the second of the three numbers on their records for the vaccine certificate… 
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Just checked the QR code of a native Taiwanese. All good there:
"fn" : "無"
"gn" : "名氏"
"fnt" : "WU"
"gnt" : "MING<SHI"
Three lessons for me:
-
There seems to be some issue with the data (or possibly even the data fields) in wherever the TW certificate app pulls its data
-
Likely the TW certificate app also garbles something
-
The German app should use the “fnt” and “gnt” instead of “fn” and “gn”. Seems like they also don’t think about foreign names in Germany, just like often in Taiwan the other way round…
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