Officials May Call App Users For Tests Or Quarantine

Health authorities may in future call up people who need to be tested for Covid-19 or sent into quarantine using contact information provided in the LeaveHomeSafe app.

Secretary for Innovation and Technology Alfred Sit said on Monday that operators of regulated premises will soon use a device to scan a visitor's app to obtain their vaccination record – which will then be stored on the device in an encrypted format.

The Centre for Health Protection could ask the operators to hand over the data of people present at a venue at the same time as a confirmed Covid patient or their close contacts, Sit said on an RTHK programme.

“In the past, for some reason, some individuals were late to undergo [mandatory] tests, perhaps their phones were not connected to the internet and they didn’t get the notification,” he said.

“Under such circumstances, in future when the situation is severe, are we going to consider making use of the information provided in the ‘vaccine pass’, and take the initiative to contact individuals who have to be tested, or follow up on quarantine arrangements, so that we can improve our anti-epidemic work? We will certainly look into it and implement it.”