Covid-19: Hong Kong to step up restriction enforcement with colour-coded app system, but health minister says change not aimed at ‘tracking’ residents
- Infected patients quarantining at home will be issued with red health code as part of changes to ‘Leave Home Safe’ risk-exposure app
- Additionally, residents under home quarantine will be required to wear tracking wristbands from Friday
Arrivals, who could soon be allowed to spend part of their one week of quarantine at home rather than all seven days at a hotel, would be issued with a yellow code and both groups would be barred from visiting certain high-risk places or engaging in activities that involved removing masks, Secretary for Health Professor Lo Chung-mau on Monday said.
“All our measures target people who have been infected who carry the virus and create risk to others, so we have to make sure home isolation is more precise while also being humane,” Lo said.
The government hoped to make the necessary changes to the “Leave Home Safe”, including adding real-name registration, as soon as possible as part of contingency plans to handle any sharp increase in infection numbers, he said.
The wristbands, which residents wore while quarantining at home earlier in the pandemic, were once again needed as an “extra line of defence” and would further reinforce the requirement that infected people stay in their flats, Lo argued.
“The isolation orders have a legal basis, [but] it is not guaranteed that all people will follow them. Some people may unintentionally violate them,” he said. “We had previous instances in which the wristbands were removed.”
More than 12,000 Covid-19 patients are currently subject to home isolation, but authorities do not carry out any constant checks on their whereabouts.