Thermal scanners, also known as temperature guns, have been at the forefront of mass surveillance during the pandemic, but are they useful and can they detect Covid-19?
Prof Cheryl Cohen, the co-head of the centre for respiratory disease and meningitis at the National Institute for Communicable Diseases, said the scanners can be used as a way of protecting people against Covid-19 by picking up cases early.
“So if a person happens to have a fever and we test them and isolate them from society, then this is a helpful part of our defence against the virus,”Cohen stressed that thermal scanners are not 100% effective and cannot pick up the virus if someone is in the incubation period of the virus. The incubation period is the period between exposure to an infection and the appearance of the first symptoms.
“A person in the incubation period will have the virus in their body but there is no sign that they are sick, they don't have a fever and they can go on to get sick later. So these people can never be picked up by thermal scanners or any other screening tests,” she said.
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