Beijing (AFP)

Scan a barcode with your phone to fight Covid: China has launched a digital "health passport", hoping to revive international travel a year after the WHO called the Covid-19 epidemic a "pandemic".

The first country struck by the coronavirus and to confine its population, China was one of the very first to have generalized the use of QR codes to control movement, identify contact cases and isolate patients.

QR codes and health codes

This is the ritual that is difficult to overcome in China: scanning a barcode with your phone and showing off, with an app that delivers a "green" pass, synonymous with good health.

This procedure is required at the entrance of a building, a business or a park, as well as to take the plane, the train or a taxi.

The phone decrypts a bar code, generally made up of mosaics with black squares on a white background (a "QR code" for Quick Response code).

A gesture that allows you to leave a digital trace of a passage in a specific place at a given moment.

If a person is sick, contact cases can quickly be identified: in China, anti-Covid tracking apps are directly associated with an identity number.

On the phone, a colored "health code" appears: green (no problem), yellow (obligation to quarantine at home) or red (quarantine in a place provided for this purpose).

How it works?

In China, there is not an anti-Covid app but a multitude that coexist.

And depending on the city and region, they do not collect the same information.

The app designed by the government is based on geolocation data provided by operators and scans trips for the previous 14 days.

This makes it possible to know if an individual has gone to a risk area or has crossed paths with a Covid-19 patient.

Other applications use different sources like reservations for train or plane tickets.

Is it obligatory?

The tracking app is not mandatory.

But in fact, it has become impossible not to have one to enter a public place or move around.

Last spring, the press reported the case of a criminal on the run for 24 years who ended up surrendering to the authorities: without a smartphone or a tracking app, it had become impossible for him to move around, to enter a store. and even to be hired on construction sites.

In China, the (rare) people who do not have a telephone or toddlers are given a QR code ... to hang around their neck.

During a control, the authorities only have to scan it to ensure that an individual does not come from a so-called risk area.

Is it effective against the virus?

On the front line in the face of the coronavirus at the end of 2019, China is today one of the few countries to have returned to an almost normal rhythm of life, also thanks to the widespread wearing of masks and massive screening tests.

"It is this set that makes the efficiency, not the application alone", told AFP Jean-Dominique Séval, specialist in the Chinese digital economy and director of Soon Consulting.

The app has a history of screening and vaccination tests.

And the metadata make it possible to identify and isolate patients, which "reassures everyone a little", believes Mr. Séval.

A Chinese model?

With its experience in managing the epidemic, Beijing is pushing for the adoption of a universal health code at the global level.

And China launched Monday a "health passport" to allow the resumption of travel abroad.

But "the implementation may be long and complicated" because agreements between countries will be necessary beforehand, warns Mr. Séval.

The health passport is designed to display and authenticate passenger health data, such as their Covid tests (PCR and antibodies) or their vaccination status.

The initiative was proposed in November at the G20 summit by President Xi Jinping.

What about privacy?

The vast majority of Chinese readily lend themselves to the game of tracing.

QR codes were already widely used before the epidemic to pay with your phone in China, where cash has almost disappeared.

However, the question of personal data also arises in China, notes Mr. Séval.

"You can't say it's completely + Big Brother +" but you can't do anything and everything with it, "it's in between," he believes.

QR codes are, however, the "ideal means of attack for cybercriminals," warns cybersecurity expert Roman Zaikin, of the specialist firm CheckPoint.

Because "a malicious QR code [false code, editor's note] is undetectable to the naked eye".

Once scanned, it is already too late, warns Zaikin.

© 2021 AFP