Hands-on with New York's Excelsior Pass vaccine passport: low adoption, privacy concerns, persistent technical glitches, and limited use at top leisure venues
Rebecca Chowdhury / MIT Technology Review : Tweets: @techreview , @rebecca_chowd , @techreview , @brianmcc , and @miarsato Tweets: @techreview : New York's vaccine passport now has about 2 million downloads, which represents just 10% of fully vaccinated residents, but implementation has been rocky. https://www.technologyreview.com/ ... Rebecca Chowdhury / @rebecca_chowd : New York was one of the first epicenters of the pandemic and its recovery process sets a national precedent. But according to Alexis Hancock at @EFF: “Mostly these apps are a waste of time and money.” Read about the nation's first vaccine passport: https://www.technologyreview.com/ ... @techreview : When we tried out the first statewide vaccine passport, we found privacy concerns, technical glitches, and questions over who New York's Excelsior Pass is really for. https://www.technologyreview.com/ ... Brian McCullough / @brianmcc : Have it on my phone. Would use the heck out of it if... anyone ever asked me for it. https://www.techmeme.com/... @miarsato : just 10% of fully vaxxed NYers have downloaded the vaccine pass app. very few places are actually checking it and immigrant populations are worried about the potential for increased surveillance. $2.5M spent on it so far, w/ potential for millions more. https://www.technologyreview.com/ ...
Context & Ripple Effects
When New York launched Excelsior Pass in March on IBM's blockchain-based health pass platform — the first US state vaccine passport, aimed initially at large venues — it was pitched as a national template for reopening. The MIT Technology Review hands-on now shows the gap between launch and usage: about 2 million downloads is roughly 10% of fully vaccinated New Yorkers, few top leisure venues are actually checking it, glitches persist, and EFF's Alexis Hancock calls such apps 'a waste of time and money.'
The pattern echoes earlier pandemic-tech flops: US contact tracing efforts fell flat by mid-2020 as most states retreated, and only 13 of 26 jurisdictions analyzed last month had enough contact-tracing app usage to make exposure notification worthwhile. With cities like NYC beginning to mandate proof of vaccination, the question is whether a mandate can force adoption that voluntary use never delivered.
First-order effects
- New York has already spent $2.5M on Excelsior Pass with potential for millions more, while only about 1 in 10 fully vaccinated residents uses it — a poor cost-per-user for the state's flagship digital health tool.
- Top leisure venues that were the pass's original target are mostly not checking it, so IBM's platform is live but under-exercised at exactly the sites it was built for.
Second-order effects
- Privacy advocates' surveillance concerns land hardest on immigrant populations, giving venues and other states a ready reason to stick with paper CDC cards rather than adopt a similar app.
- Other governors watching this get little evidence to justify their own passport builds, repeating the retreat dynamic that killed most state contact-tracing deployments.
Third-order effects
- If mandates like NYC's become the main driver of adoption, vaccine verification may consolidate around enforcement-backed apps while voluntary government passports die off — leaving privacy and equity safeguards to be settled in policy rather than in app design.
- The recurring gap between pandemic-tech launches and real-world usage points toward procurement discipline questions for governments buying health infrastructure from vendors like IBM.
The trend: Government pandemic tech keeps failing at adoption where uptake is voluntary, pushing verification toward mandate-driven deployment or abandonment.