Alvis Lo Iek Long, a clinical director of the public Conde de São Januário Hospital Centre, said that the Macao government will re-launch the function for residents to add their home address to their Macao Health Code after New Year’s Day, following its suspension due to technical malfunction last week, adding that the deadline when residents must start to fill in their address will also be postponed accordingly.
The government announced on Wednesday that residents would have to add their home address to their Macao Health Code from 7 January, otherwise, they would not be able to get the code generated on their smartphones.
In addition to local residents, the new requirement will also apply to non-locals living or staying in Macao, who will need to indicate the address of the place where they usually stay, such as workplaces, casinos or hotels.
The government said on Wednesday that Macao Health Code users could add their address to the code from Thursday (Christmas Eve). During a 14-day transition period which was initially slated to run until January 7, they could choose not to add the address, in which case they can still have their health code generated on their smartphones.
However, a technical malfunction occurred on the Macao Health Code system at 1:20 pm on Christmas Eve (the day when the new function was initially slated to start) when residents were not able to have the health code generated on their smartphones. The service resumed at 2 pm after an emergency repair by the Health Bureau’s (SSM) technical team. The government announced later that day that it had decided to suspend the new function of adding address information to the Macao Health Code “until further notice” as the technical team could not confirm whether the malfunction was due to the new function.
Lo said on Monday that the bureau’s technical team has confirmed that the malfunction which occurred on the Macao Health Code system on Christmas Eve was not due to the new address function, adding that the team has concluded that the malfunction was due to “abnormal” operation of the system’s server.
Lo said that Macao is still in its holiday period so that many residents have left the city, the government has decided to continue carrying out more tests of the new function before re-launching it after New Year’s Day. Lo noted that the 14-day transition period for residents to add their home address to their Macao Health Code will be postponed accordingly.
Meanwhile, Lo also said that since the launch of the local government’s routine nucleic acid testing (NAT) scheme in early May, over two million people have undergone Covid-19 tests under the scheme, comprising 1.3 million local residents and 700,000 non-locals. Lo also pointed out that some 10,000 people undergo a nucleic acid test every day on average, with more people around public holidays.
(The Macau Post Daily/Macao News)
Photo by Government Information Bureau (GCS)
