Covid-19: Beijing compound staff meet backlash after demanding quarantined residents wear wristband monitor

‘Same as an electronic shackle’: resident reports disquiet after being ordered to wear wristband that monitors body temperature and potentially tracks movement
China’s National Health Commission has repeatedly prohibited local governments from imposing excessive pandemic prevention measures

Coronavirus China

Phoebe Zhang

Published: 8:00pm, 14 Jul 2022

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A compound in Beijing faced a public backlash after staff imposed the use of electronic monitoring wristbands for residents who were in Covid-19 home quarantine after recently returning from other provinces.

The wristband had to be worn 24 hours a day, a staff member from Beijing’s Tiantongyuan residential community told Shanghai-based news portal Eastday.com.

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“You also have to make sure it’s connected at all times … except for when you’re showering or recharging it,” the worker said. “It needs to be worn for seven days, until your last nucleic acid testing result comes out.”

In a viral Weibo post on Wednesday night, a Beijing resident said he had just returned to the city from a business trip and voluntarily reported his whereabouts to his residential compound.

His home quarantine had almost finished when a compound employee called him to say everyone must wear an electronic wristband to measure body temperature. The wristband is connected to a phone, making it easier to report temperature and other data.

“I told her that if the wristband can connect to the internet, it must be able to track my whereabouts as well – it’s almost the same as an electronic shackle,” he wrote.

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When he received the wristband, he said he found it was developed by Beijing Microchip Sensing Technology but had no China Compulsory Certification, a required safety mark for many products in the Chinese market.

The Beijing resident said he did not believe his residential community could ensure that his data and information were safe.

On Thursday evening, he reported on his social media that the community had withdrawn the wristband after the outcry.

When a reporter from the South China Morning Post phoned a Beijing Covid-19 prevention hotline to ask whether a wristband was necessary for home quarantine, a staff member read aloud all relevant measures and policies. The employee said that even though there was no information about wristbands among the policies, the decision to use them was up to individual residential communities.

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China’s National Health Commission has repeatedly prohibited local governments from imposing excessive pandemic prevention measures, stressing that policies must be scientific and accurate.

This week, Hong Kong also announced it would mandate the use of electronic tracking wristbands for people in home isolation and could bring in a mainland-style health code system. The wristbands would be used by people who test positive for Covid-19 to ensure they do not leave home during the required isolation period.

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During quarantine, the app will analyse communication signals, such as Bluetooth, Wi-fi and GPS, in the neighbourhood and “their respective strengths”.

In 2020, Hong Kong rolled out plastic wristbands with a QR code and later, an electronic tracker was used by people under home quarantine. There have been numerous cases of people wearing the electronic trackers out in public.