Hundreds of border-crossers were held up yesterday morning and again in the afternoon after the Macao Health Code system was hit by a technical glitch.
Lengthy queues formed outside and near the Barrier Gate border checkpoint as travellers were unable to generate a health code on their smartphones.
In an attempt to ease the congestion the Public Security Police urged border crossers to use other Macao-Zhuhai checkpoints.
Border crossers must generate and display a health code when crossing the border, which is used to display their state of health, travel history and Covid-19 nucleic acid test result.
The Health Bureau (SSM) confirmed that a technical flaw “suddenly” affected the Macao Health Code system at around 7:35 am yesterday, adding that the breakdown “lasted for a while”.
Another technical mishap occurred at around 2:45 pm, lasting around 30 minutes.
The SSM said that according to the findings of a preliminary investigation, the defect was due to an “abnormally sudden” increase in data usage and transmission on the Macao Health Code system within a short period of time, which blocked its servers.
The SSM added that it was still identifying the more fundamental causes of the malfunction, The Macau Post Daily reported.
