(Yicai Global) Dec. 13 -- China Mobile, China Unicom, and China Telecom will delete users’ mobile travel data from today, after the national app tracking people’s whereabouts in the country during the Covid-19 pandemic was switched off.

Information on users collected from the ‘itinerary code’ app will be deleted in accordance with the law, the big three state-owned telecoms operators said yesterday, according to Xinhua Finance Agency.

They introduced the app in March 2020 at the behest of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology to prevent and control the virus’ spread. It tracked the cities that mobile phone users had visited in the prior two weeks, and flagged up journeys to locations with new Covid-19 cases.

Nearly 900 million people used the app -- which was switched off at midnight yesterday -- more than 60 billion times.

The app synchronized with the national health QR code to show if users had recently been to medium- or high-risk Covid areas. On June 29, it stopped showing if people had visited such areas, and on July 8, the tracking period was cut to seven days from 14.

Editor: Futura Costaglione