How to get your Covid-19 foreign issued vaccines certified in Rome, enabling you to get the Green Pass. 

Here are the practical steps entailed:

Step 1: Have your  foreign-issued vaccine certificate in hand. 

If your certificate is in any language other than English, you will need to get it translated and notarized. Your certificate could either be a printed certificate, or vaccination card that was filled out by the person who gave you the two doses.  Neither one needs to be original, but originals will not hurt. If you have both, take them.

Make sure your certificate or your vaccination card has the following critical pieces of information, otherwise you will not be able to convert the certificate:

1. Your name and date of birth as they appear on whatever form of identification you will take with you, be it a passport or an Italian ID card. 

2. The brand of the vaccine you were vaccinated with. Only the following will be validated:

• Comirnaty (PfizerBioNtech);
• Spikevax (Moderna);
• Vaxzevria (AstraZeneca);
• Covid-19 Vaccine Janssen (Janssen-Johnson & Johnson).).

3. The dates of your two doses.

4. The name of the issuing authority.

5. This is critical: The lot or batch number of each dose. Each vaccine has a unique batch number. For example, the Pfizer vaccine batches are made up of two letters and four digits,  as in FF 1234. There is likely an international database of vaccine lots that allows governments to corroborate this data.

Step 2. Get your supporting documents ready. 

- Your ID, which can be a passport or an Italian identification card. Driver's licenses will not be accepted. 

- Your Italian National health card (tessera sanitaria) if you have one, or if you are an Italian living abroad,  your AIRE code (The Registry of Italians Resident Abroad.)

- If you have neither an Italian national health card, or are not a returning Italian with an AIRE code, then your Italian fiscal code (codice fiscale) should suffice. 

Step 3. Where to go.

There is only one place in Rome that processes foreign COVID-19 certificates. The EUR COVID-19 vaccine hub at the Rome Convention Center (The Cloud) at Viale Asia, 40 /44, 00144 Roma RM. In Italian it is called l'HUB Vaccinale “La Nuvola”. I repeat, this is the ONLY place in Rome that will do the conversion for you. There is free parking outside and courtesy water bottles at the entrance. At the entrance, inform the guards or the medical staff that you are here to convert your foreign COVID-19 certificate and you will be allowed in, bypassing the queues of people who've come for their pre- scheduled COVID-19 immunization appointments. 

Step 4. How it works.

Once you are inside the building, they will guide you to the designated area for vaccine conversions. The young men and women wearing red will take all your documents, photocopy them, and have you fill out a form. They will then send your paperwork to an area in the back where a doctor will check your documentation, including corroborating the batch number you provided. Once this is done, the doctor will issue two documents (one for each dose) stating your vaccines have been registered with the Italian ministry of health. While this happens, you will be seated.

Make sure to go early, as it starts getting busy after 10:30. Aim to be there shortly after 9:30. The HUB is open from 9:30 to 17:30.

If you go later and it's busy, make sure to check in with the front office staff (wearing red) to make sure your application is being processed and that there are no problems with it. If you don't ask, you will not be told, and could end up waiting four to five hours until you are informed of whatever problem exists with your paperwork. 

Step 5. Getting your Green Pass.

Forty-eight hours after this, you can take the documents that were issued to your local pharmacy and they will print your Green Pass. Presumably your pharmacy can also show you how to get a digital copy of your Green Pass on your mobile device. 

This is a link to the official Italian instructions

A Wanted in Rome reader, Aymen Khalifa, shared his experience with us. Here we have published the report of his experience. Aymen is an Australian novelist based in Rome.