Guangdong Health Code Officially Goes Offline

By Lars James Hamer, February 17, 2023

On February 16, 2023, Guangdong province’s official health code, Yuekang Code, officially discontinued services.

Users will now be greeted with the following message should they try to access the Yuekang Code:

According to relevant regulations, Yuekang Code services, such as assisted help for the elderly, health declaration and the pandemic prevention and control workspace will be closed from 11am on February 16, 2023.
Since its launch, we have adopted strict technical and management measures in accordance with the "Data Security Law of the People's Republic of China," "Personal Information Protection Law of the People's Republic of China" and other relevant laws and regulations to protect personal information security in accordance with laws and regulations. For offline services, we will also completely delete and destroy all service-related data in accordance with relevant laws and regulations to effectively protect the security of personal information.

On December 7, 2022, China suddenly disbanded key aspects of its ‘zero-COVID’ policy.

One of said policy changes was that people on the Chinese mainland would not need to present their health code when taking public transport, checking into hotels or entering any public space.

The move essentially made health codes a thing of the past, and the discontinuing of Guangdong’s version only reiterates this.

During China’s brutal ‘zero-COVID’ policy, which saw people quarantined against their will for being a secondary close contact, snap lockdowns of millions of people and restrictions on daily life, health codes played a large part in tracking people’s movements and therefore the virus.

Not only did residents have to present a green health code to enter most places (in some cases even office buildings and apartments) but people could also be refused entry to different cities if their travel history included places where the virus was prevalent.

After three long years, the battle to control the virus is over and the last dying remnants are slowly being removed from people’s lives.