Mass screening for COVID-19 related fever

An infrared body temperature monitoring system will play a key role in improving awareness and controlling the spread of the pandemic

- KIRAN UNNI

Pandemic used to be a word one looked up in the dictionary (or the encyclopedia, in another era) as a purely an academic exercise. Recent weeks and COVID-19 have shown us how it is now a clear and present danger on global, regional, state-wide and individual levels.

Change in culture, lifestyle, and economics over the past 50 years unearth the inescapable fact that this is not the last pandemic we will witness in our lifetimes. Demographic studies are clear indications of this inevitability. While the medical world is racing against time to develop and deploy tests and vaccines for these novel viruses, the instrumentation world cannot be far behind in efforts to monitor and contain the spread of potential viruses. One of the consistent indicators of infection from such viruses is high fever.