A few months ago in March, when I came back to China from the U.S, I quarantined in Shanghai for 14 days. Since I came back from “the center of the pandemic”, my health code was red as soon as I got off the plane. The health code system was first launched in late February in mainland China. It uses the colors of red, yellow and green to differentiate the “health states” of different users and aims to monitor and keep track of people currently residing or staying in mainland China during this special “covid-19” period. However, this system is still rather new and some problems caused by this system do exist, the one I encountered could be a telling example.
When I finished my quarantine in mid April, I initially planned to stay in Shanghai for a few more days to visit the city. I was really looking forward to it since I finally did not have to be confined in that hotel room and could go around freely in the city. I booked a new hotel for my stay in Shanghai and also the flight ticket to my home Shenzhen. However, to my surprise, the day when my quarantine ended and I received “official document” which proves that I finished the required quarantine, my health code still remained red the time when I left my quarantine hotel. I was really worried about the red health code and asked the staff at my quarantine hotel if this red code would affect my upcoming trip in Shanghai. For example, will I be able to take public transportation in the city? They told me that as long as I have my quarantine certificate and my nucleic acid test’s negative result, there would not be any big problems. And then, I arrived at the hotel that I was supposed to live in, and I was rejected by the hotel just because my health code was red. I showed them my quarantine document and my nucleic acid test result, but they just did not help at all. The staff at the hotel told me that “We don’t dare to let you stay in our hotel because of the color of the code. If any accident happens, we need to be responsible for letting a red code person stay in the hotel.” They also added that it is very unlikely that other hotels in the city would allow me to stay, because my health code was red. Apparently, everything depends on the health code and my quarantine document and nucleic acid test just would not help at all. I called relative governmental department to ask why the color of my code remained red after the quarantine, they just told me there might be a lag in the process of updating the code, and all I could do was to wait till it changes. I was afraid the color would not turn green before night and in that case, I would be “homeless” and wandering on the streets of Shanghai without a place to sleep at night, so I bought another flight ticket and flew home that day. My whole trip was affected because of the health code, but there was nothing I could do about it at that time. When I got home at night, the code did turn green, but it was just too late since I was already in Shenzhen.
My example proved that this health code system is just not that omnipotent. There are little bugs or loopholes that may later on have greater impact on its users. For me, it was not a big one since it is not a big deal that I could not start my planned trip in Shanghai, but if in other’s case, the lag of updating the color of the code causes much greater impact, to the extent that the system strictly hinders or controls travel of ordinary people with no flexibility, will it be questioned and discredited by its users?
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