“Fever detection” camera fighting coronavirus? Experts say they do not work

In an attempt to protect shoppers and his employees from COVID-19 contracts, Ben Vo, the owner of U.S. grocery chain City Farmers Market, recently recently added thermals at each of his six locations. I installed a camera.

“Because we focus on the face, we basically measure the temperature of the head as we enter the store,” Vo said.

“It’s in the corner, not just before the entrance. We have an LCD monitor that security personnel can see and customers can see.”

If an employee sees a reading above 38 degrees, the shopper is pulled aside and asks him to pass a flyer and leave.

According to Vaud, this is only twice in two weeks after installing cameras from FLiR, a company specializing in thermal imaging cameras.

Demand for this type of camera has increased dramatically in recent weeks, despite experts saying it is an inaccurate tool for identifying infected individuals.

Vo’s grocery store proposes to take a customer’s shopping list and search for groceries when asked to leave for temperature readings.

“I approach a lot of customers and say,” Wow, this is a good thing you do. ” And some customers are excited to take their extraordinary. ”

Vo is not the only business owner interested in trying infrared cameras to monitor people’s temperature as a tactic to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus.

NBC News finds more than 10 security companies in the U.S., Europe and China that are marketing technologies that can identify who is most likely to have a fever in the crowd, and thus who may be a coronavirus Did.

These companies are actively marketing to police, government agencies, schools, hospitals and private companies.

7NEWS.com.au details

According to 11 companies that NBC News has marketed this technology as a form of coronavirus detection, thermal cameras can help find sick people in the crowd by finding people whose temperature is rising. Can be found.

Fever is a symptom of COVID-19, a disease caused by the coronavirus.

However, according to experts in thermal imaging and virus surveillance, the problem with this technology is that thermal imaging is an inaccurate way to scan a crowd and does not measure the temperature inside the body.

They also pointed out that the coronavirus, if present, fever only after a few days of infection in a person.

Ah Recent research in Iceland Examination of a significant portion of the population showed that 50% of all people who tested positive were asymptomatic.

The growing demand for thermal cameras also arises when the government is looking for new ways to track sick people. Use location information on smartphone

Thursday, President Donald Trump says the federal government Plan to implement It is unknown whether or not thermal images were mentioned, but a “robust surveillance test” to assess the risk of individual counties in states that have suffered business or school closures in response to the outbreak.

A booming market

Various companies sell thermal cameras for heat detection. Surveillance technology start-ups have jumped on the opportunity to launch new products and websites quickly and sell high-tech solutions to companies who are desperate to return to work.

Other companies have been in the surveillance camera market for a long time and have been selling thermal imaging for years before the coronavirus swept the world.

so Video posted on TwitterRemark Holdings, Inc., sold its fever monitoring system to the Las Vegas police on Monday.

In a presentation, Shing Tao, CEO of the company, said that using fever monitoring technology, law enforcement and other customers could point their cameras at a large crowd and say, “I can identify who they are. It will match them with a virtual ID and capture their temperature, “he adds, his company has been testing for the past two years.

Remark Holdings also uses face recognition technology It claims Works even if the target is wearing a mask.

Las Vegas police did not respond to a request for comment.

Thermal imaging scans for detecting heat are widely used in China and South Korea, and systems are installed in front of companies and buildings in both countries.

US companies such as: Las Vegas Wynn Resort Vo, a Georgia grocery store chain, has also installed thermal imaging systems, but this technology has not yet been widely adopted.