A student gets his temperature checked before entering the canteen at Nanchang University in Nanchang, east China's Jiangxi Province, on May 7, 2020. Students of Nanchang University started to return to school on Thursday. The university has taken various epidemic prevention measures on campus to ensure the safety of students. (Xinhua/Peng Zhaozhi)

Health codes - a Chinese innovation that are being used to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic -- could become part of the nation's ongoing disease prevention measures, which are set to persist for some time. 

But as the codes are linked to personal privacy, data security must be a precondition for their use, and the government should announce data management measures to protect privacy, experts said on Thursday.

The comments came as several National People's Congress deputies proposed to continue using the health code, which has played a vital role during the pandemic in China. Some cities have called for an upgrade in the function of the code, which has caused concern about people's private information and drawn some Western media organizations' attention on how China will protect privacy rights. 

In his annual advice for the two sessions, Jiao Binlong, vice mayor of Taiyuan in Northwest China's Shanxi Province, suggested that the health code should be used and managed at the national level.

"Since prevention measures against a pandemic resurgence will have to stay in place for a while, it is reasonable to keep the health code," Xin Haiguang, a senior IT commentator told the Global Times on Thursday.

"However, the government should give people's privacy top priory as the worst of the pandemic has passed, and relevant companies and government departments should strengthen data management obtain individual consent before collecting data," he added.

"As disease prevention has become the new normal, the government should release a guideline for health code usage in normal situations with adequate supervision of data collection, and preset countermeasures in case of data leaks," Xin added.

Since the COVID-19 outbreak in China, many technology companies including Tencent and Alibaba have released health codes, as have some local governments, which has led to "data over collection," Zhu Wei, a communications researcher at the China University of Political Science and Law in Beijing, told the Global Times.

Even if the health codes are approved for use in the future, considering that they involve many sensitive private details such as location histories, phone numbers and ID numbers, the excessive collection of data should be avoided," Zhu said, calling for a unified management system.

Data collectors should also clarify what information they will collect and how this will be used, Zhu noted.