While immunization vaccines are rolling out at an impressive pace, and as society slowly reopens, our best defense against the Coronavirus continues to be early detection and rapid response (such as self-isolation).
An early symptom of having the virus is an increased body temperature, which can be easily measured using contactless methods such as thermal sensors or cameras sensitive to IR radiation.
However, general purpose cameras still have a role to play – in augmenting and putting into better context the thermal data.
Imagine two cameras – one IR and one standard – observing the entrance to a place of work or indoor public venue. If the image captured by the standard camera feeds a system with face detection software, then the thermal image can be made more meaningful: yes, that heat source is a human face.
