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

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...