As of 1 September 2023, the COVID Certificate app is not being developed further. Existing certificates in the app are only stored locally. It will therefore still be possible to display these in a reduced form even after the certificate system has shut down. All other functions in the app are no longer available.
The Swiss certificate system consists of so-called back-end systems, which the Federal Office of Information Technology, Systems and Telecommunication (FOITT) uses to issue and check COVID certificates, and the apps installed locally on mobile phones (COVID Certificate app (holder app) and COVID Certificate Check app (verification app)). As the back-end systems (with the exception of repositories for static text and configuration files) will be fully shut down from 1 September 2023, from that point onwards existing holder apps will no longer receive a response from the back-end systems and will thus display the following messages:
- Validity could not be determined
- Verification not possible at this time
- In order to show the certificate's validity, the app must be online regularly.
However, the fact that the holder apps will no longer receive a response from the back-end systems will not affect the QR codes on the existing COVID certificates. This means that the QR codes can still be checked if need be, and certificates can still be used for travel as long as they comply with the destination country’s entry regulations and their QR code has technically not yet expired. The QR code for each COVID certificate is technically valid for two years.