During the frenzy of the past few months to secure resources for the fight against COVID-19, the demand for technologies that promise to detect symptomatic individuals has been sky-high. However, not all proposed solutions work as advertised.
Thermal cameras are already being implemented as a means of detecting people with fever-like symptoms in high-traffic areas such as hospital entrances, shopping centres and office buildings, and potentially mass-attendance sporting events when they resume.
People who show up as having high temperatures can then be directed to further assessment and encouraged to isolate to help curb the spread of COVID-19.
But the evidence suggests thermal cameras are far from a perfect solution, offering limited accuracy if set up incorrectly, and raising data privacy concerns.
Accuracy Is Important
Despite the urgency of the COVID-19 situation, we cannot abandon accuracy. If temperature screening incorrectly detects many people as having a fever, then healthcare services will be burdened by needless secondary assessments.
On the other hand, if the technology fails to detect many people who do have symptoms it may create a false sense of security and lead to future COVID-19 clusters. This is especially important in high-risk environments such as aged-care facilities or hospitals.
The most accurate tools for measuring temperatures are the ones used to assess hospital patients for fever, such as mouth, ear and rectal thermometers. However, these tools require training to use correctly, and bring patients into direct contact with a device which must then be cleaned before it can be used again.
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