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

To tie in with the implementation of the vaccine pass, the Government has updated the functions of the LeaveHomeSafe and QR Code Verification Scanner mobile applications, with the LeaveHomeSafe app able to store users' COVID-19 vaccination records or medical exemption certificates to facilitate their access to designated premises.

Deputy Government Chief Information Officer Tony Wong made the announcement at a press briefing today and made it clear that the LeaveHomeSafe mobile app does not have a tracking function.

“The current design of the LeaveHomeSafe mobile app is that it is not a tracing device. The purpose of the mobile app is to help users record their visit history. When the users visit different venues, they scan the venue code and then record their visit history.

“Recently, to support the implementation of the vaccine pass, we implemented the storage function to the mobile app to help citizens store their vaccination record QR code to facilitate them if there is a need to display or show this QR code to the venue operators. That is the facilitation arrangement.”

Mr Wong also assured citizens that their data was well protected.

“In terms of privacy protection, as I mentioned in my introduction, the vaccination record information stored in the QR Code Verification Scanner mobile app of the operators is encrypted. Also, personal information like names and ID card numbers are masked and undergo the hashing process, so as to make the information non-identifiable and it becomes scrambled information and data stored in the mobile app.

“The mobile app will keep this information only for 31 days. It will be automatically erased. The operators or the mobile app users have no way to access the data.”

He noted that the Centre for Health Protection (CHP) would access the encrypted data only when required for contact tracing.

“Only when an infection case happens in that venue, Centre for Health Protection officers will request the operators to unlock the mobile app through a one-time use password and send this encrypted data to the central database of the CHP for contact tracing.

“With that, we have confidence that all the data kept in this mobile app is not personally identifiable data. So personal privacy is well protected under the current design.”