The Chinese government created a color-coded smartphone app to track people's movements in the early stages of the epidemic in an effort to stop the spread of COVID-19 and carry out its zero-COVID policy. However, this week, media sources stated that Henan province's capital city of Zhengzhou's officials were now employing the necessary rules to restrict the movement of citizens irate that their accounts had been frozen by nearby banks.
On Monday, hundreds of depositors who had lost access to their money had intended to go to Zhengzhou, but their health codes had unexpectedly changed to red. Due of their inability to travel, the protests were unsuccessful. The red code appeared to target exclusively depositors.