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.
The new health code system would not replace the current vaccine pass scheme, Lo stressed, as the former was meant to identify people in a public setting who had tested positive or were deemed high risk.
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Infections have more than tripled in the past 30 days and reached 2,863 on Monday, including 252 imported ones. Seven additional deaths were also reported. Hong Kong’s Covid-19 tally stands at 1,273,663 cases, with 9,419 related fatalities.
Lo said the government and the Hospital Authority (HA) were preparing for the number of infected residents admitted to hospital per day to double to 300 by the end of the month, which would require reserving as many as 2,500 beds. Nearly 1,000 beds were currently being used by Covid-19 patients, he added.
Authorities were also concerned about the increase in the number of infected patients in serious or critical condition, which reached as many as 10 cases a day, compared with roughly two or three serious cases a day at the beginning of June, he noted.
“We do not want other patients in the public healthcare system to be affected, particularly those in serious condition, in emergency situations and cancer patients,” the minister said.
Dr Sara Ho Yuen-ha, chief manager of patient safety and risk management at the HA, said hospitals were prepared to quickly free up more beds for Covid-19 patients if the pandemic worsened.
“If necessary, we will be able to free up over 2,000 beds, which accounts for over 10 per cent of emergency and recovering beds in public hospitals, within 48 hours. Within a week, we will be able to free up 25 per cent of beds, which is around 5,000 beds,” she said.
The government’s new colour code system is similar to the one adopted by mainland China, where a green QR code declares a resident has not been exposed to any potential cases or dangerous areas, while a yellow or red one means they are at higher risk. But the mainland’s red code can effectively stop a person’s movements entirely, preventing them from passing checkpoints or using public transport.
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The health secretary on Monday addressed concerns that the planned updates would allow the government to follow people, saying the main purpose of the changes was to identify high-risk individuals and not “track” them down.
University of Hong Kong microbiologist Dr Ho Pak-leung told a radio programme the government’s goals of minimising infected people’s mobility could theoretically be achieved by simply suspending their vaccine pass, as it was needed to enter any high-risk venues and operators were required to scan it.
“Is this what the government is looking for in its health code arrangement? This is for the government to explain,” he said.
Ho also said he believed contact tracing should not be the city’s main concern right now, given the large number of infections and a relatively high percentage of cases of unknown origin in the community.
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“On one hand, you might not be able to do contact tracing. On the other hand, there will be a very significant delay,” he said.
In some instances, authorities took as long as a week to discover a Covid-19 cluster, such as in bars or at restaurant, Ho noted, adding carrying out contact tracing after such a long period for the Omicron variant would not affect the overall trend of the virus.
The health minister also unveiled plans to allow online bookings for Covid-19 tests for travellers heading to the mainland via the Shenzhen Bay Port to tackle a backlog of screening and expand the quota, apologising for long queues after people earlier swamped the border crossing.
Hongkongers using Shenzhen Bay Port crossing can soon book Covid-19 tests online
The online system would allow authorities to process 400 people per hour, with a peak of 500, and the maximum daily capacity would be raised to 2,500 from 1,300, Lo revealed.
“On Sunday morning, within three hours, about 1,200 people were crossing at the same time, so this created long queues,” Lo said.
Shenzhen Bay Port, one of just two land passenger crossings that remain open amid the pandemic, was packed with crowds over the weekend after the Guangdong provincial city boosted the number of quarantine hotel rooms by 700 to 2,000 a day and added more spots for those in need.
Separately, Commissioner for Transport Rosanna Law Shuk-pui tested positive for Covid-19 through a rapid antigen test, according to a spokesman. She last went to work on July 8 and is currently undergoing isolation.
