---
title: "Experts: Fever-Detecting Cameras Won’t Really Stop Outbreaks"
description: "The thermal, fever-detecting cameras being installed in workplaces and hospitals are unlikely to actually stop future coronavirus outbreaks."
date: "2020-05-11"
modified: "2020-05-11"
authors:
  - name: "Dan Robitzski"
    link: "https://futurism.com/authors/danrobitzski"
url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/experts-fever-detecting-cameras-wont-stop-outbreaks"
categories:
  - "Science & Energy"
tags:
  - "coronavirus"
  - "covid19"
  - "the digest"
  - "thermal cameras"
---

# Experts: Fever-Detecting Cameras Won’t Really Stop Outbreaks

![The thermal, fever-detecting cameras being installed in workplaces and hospitals are unlikely to actually stop future coronavirus outbreaks.](<https://futurism.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/experts-fever-detecting-cameras-wont-stop-outbreaks.jpg>)
*\<em\>Image: Marco Verch via Flickr/Victor Tangermann\</em\>*

## Enhanced Surveillance

In order to nip coronavirus outbreaks in the bud, a number of companies and hospitals have started to use temperature-recording security cameras to detect fevers.

While Amazon has touted the cameras as a [technological safety measure](<https://futurism.com/the-byte/amazon-buys-thermal-cameras-scan-workers-fevers>) for its warehouses, doctors and [infectious disease experts told *Wired*](<https://www.wired.com/story/infrared-cameras-spot-fever-not-slow-covid-19/>) that the cameras, even when supplemented with symptom questionnaires, are extremely unlikely to prevent further spread of COVID-19. In fact, they could let up to 50 percent of infected people go undetected.

## Lip Service

During the SARS, Ebola, and swine flu outbreaks, doctors enacted similar measures: temperature checkpoints and other screenings for symptoms were commonplace. But, *Wired* reports, they didn't work.

"People feel better if they see it happening, but it's a false sense of security," Hildegarde Schell-Chaple, a nursing professor in charge of screening people who enter University of San Francisco hospitals, told *Wired*. "It's something we should not be doing."

## Wasted Effort

Remote thermometers can accurately measure temperatures, but work best under carefully-controlled settings, not while hanging from a warehouse ceiling.

Instead of dedicating resources to an approach unlikely to work, experts told *Wired* that companies and hospitals would be better off doing something else, like securing protective equipment for workers or trying to trace who [came into contact](<https://futurism.com/contact-tracing-apps-china-coronavirus>) with infected patients.

**READ MORE:** [Infrared Cameras Can Spot a Fever, but May Not Slow Covid-19](<https://www.wired.com/story/infrared-cameras-spot-fever-not-slow-covid-19/>) \[*Wired*\]

**More on thermal cameras:** *[Amazon Buys Thermal Cameras To Scan Workers for Fevers](<https://futurism.com/the-byte/amazon-buys-thermal-cameras-scan-workers-fevers>)*

## Author
Dan Robitzki is a senior reporter for Futurism, where he likes to cover AI, tech ethics, and medicine. He spends his extra time fencing and streaming games from Los Angeles, California.

### Author social links  
[Twitter](<https://x.com/danrobitzski>)