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Coronavirus Hong Kong
OpinionComment
Ada Chung Lai-ling
Ada Chung Lai-ling

Opinion | Hong Kong’s vaccine pass is a vital, and secure, tool in war against Covid-19

  • In striking a reasonable balance between public health and personal privacy, we have to recognise that the right to privacy is by no means absolute
  • Even so, Hong Kong’s vaccine pass adopts privacy protection by design and has undergone security assessments and audits by independent third parties

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Illustration: Craig Stephens
Ada Chung Lai-ling
With the more contagious Omicron variant sweeping across the world, governments have been ramping up efforts to address the new challenges posed by the Covid-19 pandemic. Since early this year, Hong Kong has been hard hit by the Omicron wave, and the gravity of the outbreak necessitates new and more effective containment measures.
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The vaccine pass arrangements, which took effect on February 24, require citizens to have had at least one vaccine dose (or to produce medical exemption certificates instead) before entering premises such as restaurants, shopping malls and supermarkets. Given the colossal number of infections, the prospect of even stricter anti-epidemic measures, on top of universal testing, looms large in the weeks ahead.

Empirical studies have shown that vaccination is the cornerstone of success when it comes to recovering from the pandemic and reducing the rate of infection. In the past year or so, governments around the world have gradually rolled out health codes, vaccine passes or health passports, with or without contact tracing functions, as a step towards the resumption of cross-border travel and domestic activities.

On the mainland, while practices vary across different provinces, people are required to show or scan a health code or itinerary code, which capture information related to Covid-19 infection risk and movement history respectively, before entering most public premises.
The European Union introduced a Digital Covid Certificate to facilitate cross-border travel in Europe. In France, people over 16 must present a vaccine pass to enter designated public premises and take public transport. Similarly, in Singapore, residents are required to use their vaccine pass via the contact tracing app TraceTogether to create check-in records when entering public premises.

04:36

Hong Kong prepares for tightest restrictions yet as Covid-19 cases top 1,100

Hong Kong prepares for tightest restrictions yet as Covid-19 cases top 1,100

A vaccine pass serves as an effective tool in creating a uniform way of presenting and verifying vaccination records, as well as helping public health officials in their contact-tracing efforts. But, given that it often contains data such as personal identifiers and a user’s vaccination or recovery records, any concern over privacy protection and data security is understandable.

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