I support temperature scanning as a strategy to control the spread of the virus.
We can build up the infrastructure to allow people to be scanned a few times each day and to go for a covid test if they have a temperature above 37.5 degrees.
At present, the temperature scanning is done mostly by guards. The scanning can be done by self service kiosks that can be located at bus interchanges, MRT stations, malls, markets and commercial buildings.
A person who has a high temperature should be advised to go to a special clinic to carry out a covid test. These clinics should be made available in many locations, e.g. at community centers. They can be manned by specially trained staff.
Instead of asking people to carry out temperature scanning, it is more useful for these people to be trained and deployed to carry out covid tests.
These special clinics can also carry out the tests for essential workers. They can be tested at frequent intervals. They can also carry out the tests for people who are identified by the Trace Together platform to be close contacts of infected persons.
If we focus on temperature scanning, we can drop the practice of safe entry recording. This practice is largely wasteful and useless and diverts attention from the more important work.
Some people argue that safe entry recording and its associated contact tracing can identify people who are asymptomatic. The temperature scanning works only with people who have developed symptoms of possible covid infection.
In my view, it is safe to stop the safe entry recording. It is largely useless in identifying the asymptomatic cases. This can be evidenced by the hundred of million of safe entry records that have been taken. I suspect that very few of these records have resulted in successful contract tracing.
I also hold the view that the asymptomatic cases are mild and do not spread the infection. There is a very low risk in ignoring this useless and wasteful activity.
I might be wrong in holding this view. It is for the people in charge to demonstrate that the safe entry recording is producing useful results. So far, I have not seen any report on this matter.
Here is a summary of my proposal:
* Provide unmanned kiosks for people to take their temperature scanning
* Set up special clinics for covid tests at many convenient locations
* Stop the safe entry recording.
Do you agree?
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