A passport is something that can be required for entry. Oregon’s new digital vaccine card won’t be a passport. It’s going to be an optional way people can show their vaccination status.

People already have options. They can carry around their vaccination card — or what’s probably smarter — carry around a photocopy or a photo of it on their phone. We haven’t had anyone demand to see ours, but it could happen.

The digital vaccine card, which the Oregon Health Authority is developing, would be one more optional way of carrying around that information.

Oregon’s card would be similar to the one in California and Washington state, according to a report from the Oregon Capital Chronicle. You would upload your name, date of birth, cellphone or email and a four-digit number. Your vaccination status would be checked. Once confirmed, you would get a link to the digital vaccination card to show on your phone. It’s already being tested in Oregon.

You call it a vaccine passport if you want. It’s similar to one. A vaccine passport is good shorthand. But the idea in Oregon is that it will be an optional way of carrying around vaccination status.