“China’s Offer to Help With Virus Testing Spooks Hong Kong”, 6 August 2020

… it [China’s offer to help Hong Kong expand testing] is being viewed with skepticism by some residents, who worry about… the testing project’s potential implications for their privacy…

The seven experts [from China]… were laying the groundwork for a larger team of technicians who would cross the border and work with three laboratories to ramp up testing. The labs are Hong Kong subsidiaries of mainland companies: Sunrise Diagnostic Center, established by the Chinese genomics giant BGI; Kingmed Diagnostics; and Hong Kong Molecular Pathology Diagnostic Center, according to The South China Morning Post…

They [some residents] found it especially unnerving in the wake of the sweeping national security law…

The Hong Kong government has not said who it plans to test, but it has pledged that DNA samples will not be transported to the mainland.

But the local government’s lack of transparency about the move to invite Chinese experts and the involvement of Chinese testing companies have raised alarm bells, activists say…

The chairman of Sunrise Diagnostic Center, Hu Dingxu, has said that samples would not be sent to the mainland, according to Wen Wei Po, the pro-Beijing newspaper.

Danny Yeung, the chief executive and co-founder of Prenetics, a firm that has been working with the Hong Kong government to process coronavirus samples, said his company had no access to the private information of anyone being tested because they were identified only by a bar code. Samples would be sent to a biohazard waste company for disposal after seven days, he said in an interview…

The activists’ concerns stem from the fact that the cells collected in the nasal and throat swabs used for coronavirus testing can also be used to generate DNA profiles…