Will the Excelsior Pass, New York’s Vaccine Passport, Catch On?

More than 1 million Excelsior passes have been downloaded since they were introduced, but officials are hoping they will be adopted more widely.

On the Upper East Side in Manhattan, a well-heeled crowd flashed it to get into a socially distanced dance performance at the Park Avenue Armory. In Chelsea, people showed it to attend a John Mulaney stand-up set at City Winery. And in Troy, N.Y., patrons are using it to enter an intimate, speakeasy-style bar that only admits vaccinated guests. This magic ticket is New York State’s Excelsior Pass, which was introduced in March as the first and only government-issued vaccine passport in the country, accessible, for now, only to people who have been vaccinated in the state. Officials are hoping that it can help New Yorkers feel confident about the safety of businesses and jump-start a statewide economy that is still reeling from losses experienced during the pandemic. But in order for that to happen, they will need more people and businesses to start using it and vaccine passports to become more universally accepted.