China: Corona app failure causes chaos in city of millions

In the wake of the Corona pandemic, many countries are relying on the support of a Corona app. An example from China shows what can happen if this digital pillar of the pandemic response goes down. In a city affected by the lockdown, the failure of the Corona app caused a great deal of chaos.

Xi’an in lockdown

When it comes to lockdowns during the Corona pandemic, China is considered a pioneer. The government of the Middle Kingdom does not fackelt long and is able to impose a lockdown from one day to the next. This has now been demonstrated several times. Xi’an, a city of millions, has been in lockdown for 14 days now. This looks a little stricter in the gigantic country than in our realms. Residents of the city are only allowed to leave their homes if they can produce a so-called “Covid 19 health code”. This indicates whether the person has tested negative and must be shown, for example, when admitted to a hospital.

However, the system, which is based on a Corona app, has now reportedly failed, with serious consequences for residents of the city of 13 million. For example, a video can be seen on China’s social media showing a woman lying bleeding outside the gates of a hospital. She was apparently not allowed access due to a lack of health codes. An even worse fate probably befell a heavily pregnant woman who asked for access to the hospital in the metropolis. She was also denied entry and treatment for lack of appropriate proof by health code. As a result, she lost the child.

Overloaded servers as the cause

Meanwhile, the responsible technicians are sure that a failure of the app was due to the overloaded network. There had been such a high data traffic that the servers could not cope with it. This is not a first. Traffic already collapsed at the end of December. The reason for the collapse is likely to be the great Corona outbreak that overtook the city in mid-December 2021. In the wake of it, many people had to go for regular tests and have the results transferred to their health code. Unfortunately, because of the app outage, testing of residents also stagnated. After all, everyone to be tested must be able to show their health code before being swabbed. If this is not possible, one cannot be tested.

Privacy looks different

If you take a closer look at the Corona app in China, it should send shivers down the spines of data protection experts. After installing the app, users must first enter their full name and then even their ID number. On top of that, you are asked where you have been in the last two weeks. Of course, the user’s movement data is also collected all the time. All data is processed by an algorithm and stored on a central server. If you compare this smartphone application with the app published by the Robert Koch Institute, you really are worlds apart. The RKI’s Corona-Warn-App doesn’t even ask for the user’s name, let alone ID data, and pays the utmost attention to data protection.

Is this still useful?

Many Chinese citizens are rightly asking themselves whether the many different apps that are used in the Middle Kingdom make any sense at all in their form. After all, the sheer desert of different apps ensures that there can be compatibility problems with the respective health codes from region to region. In the worst case, there is a risk of overlapping codes, which can ultimately lead to incorrect classification as a person with a risk of infection for others. The opposite case, where a potentially infectious person is classified as harmless and can thus move freely everywhere, is of course even worse.