Just use your common sense on app, restaurants told

A government official said on Thursday that restaurants shouldn’t have too much trouble enforcing the new requirement for almost all customers to use the LeaveHomeSafe Covid app, and when it comes to exemptions all they need to do is “use their common sense”.

On a Commercial Radio programme, one restaurant operator said he was worried that his staff wouldn’t always be able to tell just by looking whether a child was under the age of 16 and therefore allowed to enter without using the app.

In reply, Diane Wong, a deputy director of the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department (FEHD), said the children themselves should know how old they are.

“Everyone can use common sense to handle this,” she said, adding that young customers deemed to be under 16 should still provide their details on paper.

Wong was also asked what restaurants should do in the event that a customer wanted to dictate their personal details for staff to write down, but the staff couldn’t understand the customer’s Chinese.

The same restaurant operator, surnamed Lam, said this had happened before with staff struggling to comprehend the phone number a woman with a dialect was trying to give them.

Again, common sense would be the key to handling such a situation, Wong replied.

“I believe during the communication, if they’re a bit more patient, they can accurately get it,” she said.

At one restaurant RTHK visited, some elderly customers said they were using the app even though those over 65 are not obliged to do so.

“It’s convenient when you’re used to it… we’ve been using LeaveHomeSafe… filling in forms is troublesome,” said a man surnamed So.

Another elderly man said he was also using the app, although he needed a bit of help with it.

“I kept pressing but couldn’t get it right,” he said, adding that he’s 80 and can sometimes be a bit clumsy.