Wristband Glitches Have Now Been Fixed: Officials

The government said on Saturday that it has fixed glitches in its monitoring bracelets that are intended to track people in home quarantine.

The bracelet contains a QR code that pairs up with a smartphone app which uses the strength of surrounding communications signals like Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS to determine whether a person has left the prescribed location during their 14 days of quarantine.

But many people have complained that they did not receive the verification message needed to activate the smartphone app from the authorities - and others said they didn't get a bracelet until they complained.

The Deputy Secretary for Health, Daniel Cheng, said the government has fixed the issues and has also distributed 11,000 bracelets since Thursday - when the system came into effect.

The Health Secretary, Sophia Chan, blamed the delays with the activation messages on the fact that a large amount of information was hitting the system, after a lot of flights landed around the same time.

Chan said the authorities have "already smoothed out the process".