Chengdu, China – Sitting at the entrance of Chengdu’s East Railway Station, Fu Guobin stared at a screen displaying infrared images of people passing through the station’s gates. As each person entered, a number popped up next to their image indicating their body temperature.
“This is making my life much easier,” the station employee said as he sat in his booth. “Before this, I’d have to test everyone’s temperature with an ear thermometer. And sometimes that doesn’t work – I think this new system is much better.”
With more than 50,000 people passing daily through the railway station where Fu works, there is enormous pressure to swiftly and accurately identify those who may have a fever – one of the main symptoms of the new coronavirus infection that has killed 2,870 people in mainland China.
The thermal scanners – newly installed at train stations in major Chinese cities – are just one of the ways in which authorities are using artificial intelligence (AI) and big data to combat the deadly virus, which has now reached 56 other countries since it was first detected in central China’s Hubei province in late December last year.
Fu said so far there’s only been one instance where he’s had to inform health officials about a passenger, a woman from Henan whose fever stood at 37.9 degrees Celcius.
“After a few minutes, her temperature still hadn’t dropped. We have an isolation room in our railway station, so we put her in the room and took down her travel information, and then alerted the health authorities,” he said.
If she did carry the virus, the hospital would inform transport authorities, who would in turn alert every single passenger in her wagon, according to Fu. The authorities can do this because they keep track of every passenger via rules that require people to use their real names to use public transport.
Now, some companies in China are planning to upgrade the temperature detection system to include facial recognition technology. On February 7, AI company Megvii said it was working on a solution that “integrates body detection, face detection and dual sensing via infrared cameras and visible light” to help staff working at airports and train stations “to swiftly identify people who have elevated body temperatures”.
The company was responding to a call by Chinese authorities for new technologies to combat the outbreak.
“Facial recognition and the real-name system will help us track down those who have potentially been exposed to the virus and effectively curb the spreading of the pathogen,” Zeng Yixin, deputy director of China’s National Health Commission, told reporters on January 26.
“This high level of technology was not available during the SARS outbreak in 2003,” he said, referring to another viral outbreak that killed hundreds of people in China. “So we believe the technological development is on our side in battling this outbreak.”
The Chinese government has arguably set up the most expansive and sophisticated surveillance system in the world. In addition to the real-name system – which requires people to use government-issued ID cards to buy mobile sims, obtain social media accounts, take a train, board a plane, or even buy groceries – authorities also track people using some 200 million security cameras installed nationwide.
Some of these cameras are equipped with facial recognition technology, allowing authorities to track criminal acts, including offences as minor as jaywalking. There are reports authorities are using this extensive surveillance system to keeb tabs on people amid the coronavirus outbreak.
Ren, a restaurant owner who works in Hubei, the province at the centre of the epidemic, said local police showed up at his home in western Sichuan province where he had returned for the Chinese New Year celebrations on January 23 and ordered him to quarantine himself for 14 days.
