Hong Kong is to roll out a China-style tracking app to reopen its mainland border, officials announced, closing a gap in surveillance that had been a sticking point in protracted travel talks.
“Our current idea is that the Hong Kong Health Code will be used with LeaveHomeSafe,” Hong Kong Chief Secretary John Lee (李家超) told a briefing on Thursday evening, adding that the territory’s contact tracing app would not be retired.
The new health code would record users’ real names and collect data on places they have visited, Lee said, without giving more information.
Photo: AFP
Details would be announced next week so that the “public can download it as soon as possible, learn how to use it and operate smoothly when the borders are officially opened,” he said.
The LeaveHomeSafe app lets users enter public venues by scanning a QR code that is pegged to their mobile phone, not their name, and does not share data with the Hong Kong government.
In mainland China, a mandatory health code has dictated where residents can go since the COVID-19 pandemic hit, using a traffic light system.
It knows a user’s name, identification number and close contacts, and shares data with local authorities.
Residents of the former British colony are sensitive to mainland China’s growing control over the territory after Beijing in June last year imposed a sweeping National Security Law that has stifled free speech.
Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam (林鄭月娥) has prioritized restarting quarantine-free travel to China over the rest of the world.
That means that the territory has to match Beijing’s stringent requirements, as it pursues a “COVID zero” policy of trying to eliminate the virus from its borders.
With the addition of the app, Hong Kong has fulfilled the basic conditions to reopen the border, Lee said, after returning from the southern city of Shenzhen to meet with Chinese officials.
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