Your questions, answered“Do temperature checks reliably identify people with covid-19? What if they're asymptomatic?” — Noorillah in California “When will you write about ‘wartime profiteering?’ It's outrageous how the supply lines are profiting from the need for PPE and other equipment.” — Jay in Oregon These two questions caught our attention in recent days, and they're surprisingly related. Here's the thing about temperature checks: Most people who have covid-19 don't actually have fevers, and as many as 25 percent of infected people don’t show any symptoms at all, according to the CDC. Between those two stats, it's likely that screening for high temperatures will overlook more than half of those infected, one study suggested. But that hasn't stopped companies like RedSpeed USA, Athena Security and Feevr from pitching high-tech “fever detection” systems. Last month, RedSpeed began advertising a “fever detector” that measures the heat on a person’s skin to determine whether they are ill, describing it as fast and accurate and using “groundbreaking technology [to] identify symptoms of illness.” Georgia’s Gwinnett County quickly approved an emergency purchase of four RedSpeed scanners for county buildings. And it paid a high price: $30,000 per scanner, while the going rate from the industry leader, Oregon-based FLIR Systems, ranges from $5,000 to $15,000. The scanners aren't made for medical use, despite the nationwide rush for them. FLIR Systems strongly cautions buyers to understand how the systems are meant to be used. While the scanners can sense elevated skin temperatures, they aren’t precise enough to tell whether someone has a fever or something else — the warmth of a person’s skin is often quite different from their core body heat. People with heavier builds, health conditions or hot flashes can trigger the system’s alarms; so, too, can anyone just walking in from a hot car or parking lot. Today's answer came from reporting by Drew Harwell. Read more details in his story: Thermal scanners are the latest technology being deployed to detect the coronavirus. But they don’t really work. |
No comments: