Expats living in Guangzhou can now make a reservation for masks with their passport number through the WeChat mini-programme "Suikang" (穗康). The service opens to public at 20:00 everyday, which gives users chance to book certain amount of masks from the pharmacies nearby.

Suikang was launched by the Guangzhou Municipal Government on January 31st. It went extremely popular and got 170 million clicks on the first day of operation. The testing period of the programme will last until February 5th, during which each person can only reserve at most 5 masks per day but can have both the masks and the delivery for free.

To bring the service to the broader public, the programme has now been upgraded to allow registration with passport number as well as residence permits for Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan residents. Jianmin Pharmacy, a subsidiary of GPHL (a leading pharmaceutical manufacturer in Guangzhou), will collect the data and deliver the masks as soon as possible.

Developed by Tencent, “Suikang” welcomes feedbacks from users and will continue to improve. Some people suggested that those who have made a reservation successfully should not make another reservation in another two days. The developer adopted the idea and will make related adjustment.

Masks back in stock at these offline stores

As the chance to book masks online is still limited at the testing period, you can also try your luck at the pharmacies near communities. Major pharmacies revealed that masks are back in stock gradually as more manufacturers have resumed production.

These pharmacies include GPHL’s subsidiaries (Jianmin Pharmacy 健民医药，Cai Zhi Lin 采芝林, Guangzhou Medical Pharmacy 广州医药大药房, Yi Xin Tang 广药一心堂药店) as well as major pharmacies such as Da Shen Lin 大参林, Hai Wang Xing Chen 海王星辰 and Jin Kang 金康.

Jin Kang Pharmacy [Photo\Nanfang Metropolis Daily]

A staff member of Jin Kang said the pharmacies had a total number of 18 thousand masks back in stock at the evening of February 2nd and distributed to its 15 branches in the city.

The Jin Kang Chebei Road branch offered 400 masks on February 3rd. Although the pharmacy regulates that each resident can only buy 5 masks in every three day, the 400 masks were sold out in less than one hour.

“We believe the supply will increase gradually and we will distribute the masks to more branches in the city,” said the staff member of Jin Kang, “the government are now allocating the masks to different pharmacies every day and prohibits pharmacies to misappropriately store any masks.”