On January 11, Sichuan Province launched a unified health code. Sichuan Provincial Emergency Response Headquarters for COVID-19 Outbreak issued an announcement recently to stress the requirement of the Joint Prevention and Control Mechanism of the State Council on retaining only one health code in each province, autonomous region or municipality directly under the central government in principle. To meet the needs of the combination of normalized targeted epidemic prevention and control and local emergency response, facilitate the orderly flow of the masses, and make full use of big data to help prevent and control the epidemic, Sichuan Provincial Emergency Response Headquarters for COVID-19 Outbreak decided to launch a unified health code in the province, which was named Sichuan Tianfu Health Code.

　　Sichuan Tianfu Health Code was developed by Sichuan Provincial Big Data Center for the epidemic prevention and control in the province. It is an electronic credential showing the health status of individuals and the basis for checks on people's health status. After its launch, departments and localities in Sichuan should no longer use other health codes, making it the only health status credential for people across the province. Each person in the province holds one code, which requires real-name authentication. People need to show their health codes for entry to public places. For people who have registered Chengdu's Tianfu Health Code, the system will automatically switch their codes to Sichuan Tianfu Health Code. According to the requirement of the Joint Prevention and Control Mechanism of the State Council, the national epidemic prevention health code and the health codes of all provinces, autonomous regions and municipality directly under the central government have achieved mutual recognition relying on the national integrated government service platform. Therefore, the national health code and health codes of other places could also be used as credentials for access in Sichuan.

　　People living in Sichuan and those coming or returning to the province can apply for Sichuan Tianfu Health Code through the WeChat and Alipay mini programs and the application "Tian Fu Tong Ban". For the elderly, children and other people who have difficulties in applying for a code online, their relatives can apply for them. Foreigners can apply for a code with their passports or other valid identity documents.

　　For classified and targeted management in epidemic prevention and control, Sichuan Tianfu Health Code was designed with three colors, namely red, yellow and green. Yellow and red represent the medium- and high-risk areas respectively. Entry to public places is not allowed for people with red health codes and is restricted for people with yellow codes. Green code holders can freely enter and exit public places without any restrictions.

　　If citizens want to visit the key places, people at key positions or key groups of people determined according to the needs of the epidemic prevention and control work, they should scan the corresponding QR codes or register their visits according to the relevant management provisions of Sichuan Tianfu Health Code in the region or industry to which they belong. Industry systems and enterprises in such fields as railway/highway transport, civil aviation and tourism should enhance the service level of Sichuan Tianfu Health Code in strict accordance with the requirements of regional, level-to-level and classified epidemic prevention and control. They should provide the elderly, children and other people who have difficulties in applying for a health code online with convenient services like offline health codes and channels for people with no health codes. Moreover, they should inform the public in advance of measures related to epidemic prevention and control for their safe travel.