That attitude risks creating a scenario where coronavirus tracking is mandatory – not by law but by default. “US businesses are going to have to : If you’re going to come back to the work environment, you need this app on your phone.” The article also quotes Jena Valdetero, a privacy lawyer with Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner, who says: “It is going to be very difficult to achieve the goal of getting back to work without sacrificing some privacy”. Rob Mesirow, who has been working on PwC’s corporate contact-tracing system, Workplaces are also less reticent about making these tools mandatory. Is just one US startup selling wearables that track employees’ location so companies can carry out contact tracing in the workplace. Many employers do not share governments’ queasiness about tracking citizens’ location. When using tech to combat the coronavirus, private companies bypass many of the hurdles encountered by governments: there is often less scrutiny and employees receive few details about how their health data will be used and how it will be kept. That issue an alert if workers don’t stay socially distanced. The New York Post reported thousands of workers at a port in Antwerp, Belgium would wear bracelets that would buzz if they violated social distancing guidelines and came too close to one another. Other companies are experimenting with different varieties of so-called “corona-tech”, such asĬontact-tracing systems, digital immunity "passports" The article includes a photo of a Behrouz Biryani receipt that reads: "Below is the log of the body temperature of every team member who has helped prepare your order."įever detection technology can take the form of low-tech temperature guns or, asĪ Subway branch in Los Angeles uses a service called PopID which IDs workers and takes their temperature before allowing them to enter the food preparation area, according to the New York Times.Ĭan be incorporated into CCTV systems and paired with facial recognition to create smart surveillance. In India, the food delivery service, Behrouz Biryani, takes daily readings of its employees’ temperatures, then prints them on receipts to ensure “consumer confidence”, the chain’s parent-company Yet companies continue to use temperature checks to create a sense of safety among employees and customers as economies reopen. Whether the large number of people infected with Covid-19 who show no symptoms (and as such, have no temperature) can spread the virus. The World Health Organisation says it is still an " But the use of this technology is becoming standard in many workplaces across the world despite concerns that they create a false sense of security. In the US, temperature checks are incentivised byĪsking employers to monitor their “workforce for indicative symptoms”. When workers arrive each morning, they must exchange their temperature reading and filled-out health questionnaire answers for a sticker declaring them fit for work. This has become a daily routine at the JE Dunn construction site in the US city of Charlotte. CORONA TECH: TEMPERATURE CHECKS REACH FEVER PITCHĪ construction worker pushing his fringe out of his eyes while a temperature gun is pointed at his forehead.