The following is issued on behalf of the Hospital Authority:
 
     The spokesperson for the Hospital Authority (HA) made the following announcement today (September 1) regarding a wrong SMS message notification incident:
 
     The HA has provided agency service to the Government since December 2020 for sending SMS messages to remind members of the public for accessing their COVID-19 test results through the electronic testing record website.
 
     The HA information technology staff discovered yesterday evening (August 31) that SMS messages were mistakenly sent again to around 240 000 members of the public during system maintenance. The affected people had earlier performed their tests between February 13 and March 29 this year either by collecting deep throat saliva specimen packs at various sites or being tested in the community testing centres.
 
     The SMS messages only contained a specimen pack number and the hyperlink to the website, but not any personal information and test results. As the electronic testing record system only facilitates enquiry on and downloading of test results conducted within 31 days, the affected people are not able to access the results of the tests conducted in the above-mentioned period. 
 
     The HA is very concerned about the incident and has reported it to the Food and Health Bureau. According to preliminary findings, there has not been any laboratory service involved in the incident nor any delay in test result notification for other people.
 
     The HA expresses apologies to the affected people and will send SMS messages informing them to ignore the SMS notifications received yesterday evening. The Authority will conduct a thorough review of the system and workflow, investigate the cause of the incident and rectify the fault.

     The Office of the Communications Authority (OFCA) published an Information Memorandum (IM) today (July 30) inviting interested parties to join the auction of radio spectrum in the 600 MHz, 700 MHz, 850 MHz, 2.5/2.6 GHz and 4.9 GHz bands.
 
     The Communications Authority (CA) and the Secretary for Commerce and Economic Development (SCED) announced on March 30, 2021, their decisions on the arrangements to assign a total of 325 MHz of spectrum, including 220 MHz of new spectrum in the 600 MHz, 700 MHz and 4.9 GHz bands, and 105 MHz of re-assigned spectrum in the 850 MHz and 2.5/2.6 GHz bands, by way of a single auction.
 
     "Parties interested in participating in the auction may submit their applications to OFCA on September 23 and 24 this year. The CA will hold the auction on October 25. The spectrum will be assigned to the successful bidders under unified carrier licences with a validity period of 15 years for provision of public mobile services. The release of the spectrum is expected to support further development of the fifth generation mobile (5G) services in terms of speed, capacity and coverage," a spokesperson for OFCA said.
 
     "The SCED has set the auction reserve prices for the use of spectrum in the 600 MHz, 700 MHz, 850 MHz, 2.5/2.6 GHz and 4.9 GHz bands at $2 million per MHz, $5 million per MHz, $4 million per MHz, $5 million per MHz and $3 million per MHz respectively. The actual amount of spectrum utilisation fees payable will be determined in the auction," the spokesperson added.
 
     "To avoid an unduly high concentration of spectrum being held in the hands of a single spectrum assignee, spectrum caps will be imposed on the amount of spectrum in individual frequency bands which may be acquired by any assignee, namely 30 MHz for 600 MHz band, 30 MHz for the 700 MHz band, 50 MHz for the 2.5/2.6 GHz band and 40 MHz for the 4.9 GHz band," the spokesperson continued.
 
     Detailed arrangements of the auction are set out in the IM which can be downloaded from OFCA's website (www.ofca.gov.hk/filemanager/ofca/en/content_1517/Auction_IM_20210730.pdf).

     The effective exchange rate index for the Hong Kong dollar on Wednesday, July 14, 2021 is 101.6 (up 0.1 against yesterday's index).