Coronavirus: Hong Kong experts say ‘little point’ in using ‘Leave Home Safe’ app for contact-tracing efforts amid Omicron surge

App has stopped sending notifications to residents who have visited premises with confirmed Covid-19 cases, such as restaurants

Francis Fong Po-kiu, honorary president of the Hong Kong Information Technology Federation, says city had to rework its contact-tracing strategies

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Health officials say app no longer sends notifications to those who have visited restaurants with confirmed Covid-19 cases. Photo: K. Y. Cheng

Published: 5:52pm, 28 Feb 2022Updated: 6:01pm, 28 Feb 2022

Medical and IT experts agree the government’s “Leave Home Safe” app is no longer an effective tool for contact tracing given the tens of thousands of new coronavirus infections emerging daily in Hong Kong.

The risk-exposure app has stopped sending notifications to residents who have visited any of the premises with confirmed Covid-19 cases covered under the programme, such as restaurants.

“Previously, restaurants were listed under compulsory testing notices, but now cases are found all over the territory,” said Dr Albert Au Ka-wing, principal medical and health officer at the Centre for Health Protection, at a press conference on Sunday.

“That’s why there are temporarily no notifications from the app.”

Au added there was “no such thing as a safe premises” in the city, and reiterated that residents should still undergo a rapid antigen test if they developed any symptoms, even if they had not received a notification from the app.

Mobile phones set up at Kam Kee Cafe in Causeway Bay to scan vaccination records. Photo: May Tse

Monday’s record-breaking 34,466 cases took the overall number of infections to 205,780, with just four of the latest cases imported.