Coronavirus Hong Kong: more than 82,900 sign up in first few hours of registration for health code enabling mainland China travel

More than 82,900 Hongkongers signed up on Friday in the first four hours of registration for the city’s new Covid-19 health code, which is required for quarantine-free travel to mainland China under a long-awaited reopening of the border.

Innovation and Technology Bureau chief Alfred Sit Wing-hang revealed the number of health code registrations as of 1pm for version 3.0 of the “Leave Home Safe” contact-tracing app. But a spokeswoman said that only a few hundred people had been able to activate their accounts in the first hour of registration.