(To watch the full press conference with sign language interpretation, click here.)

To facilitate quarantine-free travel between Guangdong, Macau and Hong Kong, the Hong Kong Health Code system will be open for registration from 9am on December 10.

Announcing the details at a press conference this afternoon, Secretary for Innovation & Technology Alfred Sit said the move is for members of the public to familiarise themselves with its functions earlier, with a view to facilitating a smoother operation when quarantine-free travel with the Mainland and Macau officially resumes.

He said the system ensures that the users are not high-risk individuals during boundary crossings and would not impose additional risk to the anti-epidemic work on the Mainland, and is beneficial to the joint prevention and control mechanism.

Real-name registration is needed for the Hong Kong Health Code. Applicants are required to register their personal information such as name, identity document number and date of issue, contact number, residential address and upload Hong Kong residential address proof.

Users also have to upload their visit records in the LeaveHomeSafe mobile app for the system to determine and issue either Red, Amber or a Green Hong Kong Health Code.

After the resumption of quarantine-free travel with Guangdong or Macau, only persons with a Green Hong Kong Health Code valid for the day can apply for code conversion to the Yuekang Code or the Macao Health Code.

Concerning the privacy issues about the system, Government Chief Information Officer Victor Lam said the visit records will not be transferred automatically to the Mainland or Macau authorities.

“Everything that the user provides is on his or her consent. So if he or she applies for the Hong Kong Health Code, he or she has to give consent to provide information to the relevant authorities.

“Only when he or she is an infected person or he or she has a high risk of infection, for example, he or she is identified as a close contact of a confirmed case, then the Mainland authorities can ask for the visit records of that particular person, but that would have been given consent.

“Another thing we have already done is that we have engaged a third party to do security and privacy impact assessments to ensure that our systems can meet security and privacy considerations.”

The LeaveHomeSafe mobile app newest version 3.0 will be available for update on respective app stores at the same day the system launches.

The Government will arrange outreach teams to go out to the community, such as housing estates, street counters and MTR stations in the 18 districts, to assist citizens in need for making their applications.

Plus, the Government is actively liaising with the telecommunications industry and charitable organisations on giving smart phones and SIM cards for free to those in need.

Call 3142 2330 for enquiry on the application.