The move came after online news agency FactWire revealed that the app has a built-in facial recognition function, which was later confirmed by the Office of the Government Chief information Officer.

The function can detect the positions of a user's mouth, nose, cheeks, eyes and ears.

Some people also complained that the app showed the wrong color code for their vaccine pass, meaning they were not allowed to enter certain premises despite having been vaccinated.

Deputy government chief information officer Tony Wong Chi-kwong said yesterday that the facial recognition feature had not been requested by authorities and it has not been activated for use since its launch.

The contractor responsible for developing the app said the function was already bundled with a ready-made module they had adopted for the app.

Wong also said his office has recently received reports about the app not displaying the QR codes of users' vaccination records properly, and pledged to solve the problem within this week through a new update.

He advised those people who encounter similar problems to try scanning the venue's QR code again, or directly open their vaccine pass by tapping on their e-vaccination record.