With World Oral Health Day rolling around on Saturday, one year into the pandemic, dental experts say they are seeing a catastrophic impact of the virus on people’s teeth, gums and dental practices across the world.
The pandemic’s repeated lockdowns, restrictions on people’s movements and work-at-home edicts have all contributed to shifting daily habits and behaviours, ultimately impacting people’s oral health.
“Let’s call it for what it is – a dental disaster,” said Dr Gerhard Konrad Seeberger, president of the FDI World Dental Federation. “Restrictions have certainly played a part in oral health hesitancy, but they don’t tell the whole story.”
When Covid-19 first hit the world, dental clinics across the world were forced to close. For two or three months, all dental appointments had to be postponed or cancelled.
The World Health Organisation reported that oral health services were among the most affected by the pandemic, with 77 per cent of countries reporting partial or complete disruption.
Before the second wave hit, dental practices in many countries were able to reopen. Dentists have always abided by the most stringent infection prevention and control protocols and have also revised hygiene measures mandated by governments.
A recent survey indicates that oral health professionals have significantly lower infection rates than other healthcare workers in most parts of the world.
Despite this, many people have still avoided routine check-ups and only visit the dentist once they are in extreme pain. Many have developed advanced tooth decay and related complications, including infections, which makes treatment more complex.
Prof Paulo Melo, an FDI councillor who teaches and practises dentistry in Portugal, has seen a dozen of high-risk patients who were afraid of getting infected and had postponed their appointments. High-risk patients are encouraged to have a dental check-up every three to six months. Instead, many have waited nine months to a year, or more, between appointments. Many have reported severe toothache and complications, leading to extractions for some and endodontic treatments for others.
“During the pandemic, high-risk patients have tended to develop more than one problem, because too much time has gone by without a check-up,” Melo said. “Problems typically include caries lesions and gum disease.”
“Dental caries that could have been treated with a simple restoration have now gone to the stage of apical periodontitis and abscesses, which call for more sophisticated treatment,” said Dr Vanishree MK, a professor in Public Health Dentistry, based in the Indian city of Bangalore. “Patients should set aside their fear and not postpone essential, routine dental treatment.”
Dr Maria Fernanda Atuesta Mondragon, president of the Colombian Dental Federation and FDI councillor, said: “One of the dramatic consequences of the pandemic is that oral health issues that were not considered urgent during the outbreak did, in fact, became urgent after having to wait two months to seek treatment.
“We’ve seen some patients undergoing orthodontic treatment who have lost the gaps that were created for their teeth to align, while others have developed significant periodontal issues.”
Dr Nahawand Abdulrahman Thabet, who practises in Cairo, Egypt, and is an FDI councillor, said: “Teenagers usually suffer from dental caries, and I’ve observed an increasing level of tooth decay in this age group.
“A 15-year-old patient of mine admitted he had been snacking more while stuck at home since the closure of his school. I imagine thousands of kids his age are in a similar situation.”
Maintaining good oral care habits like day and night brushing is imperative. A global study conducted by Unilever found that children mirror parents’ behaviours at a detriment to their own health. Children are seven times more likely to skip brushing if their parent does not brush day and night. Surveyed dentists agreed that the change in children’s oral care habits stemmed from the change in parents’ routines. Despite the ongoing challenges with the pandemic, parents must prioritise their oral care routines as well as those of their children.
Dr Seeberger emphasised that “people must not be afraid to visit the dentist. Safeguarding oral health is of paramount importance to ensure general health, well-being and good quality of life.”
Marked every year on March 20, World Oral Health Day was launched by FDI World Dental Federation to raise global awareness on the prevention and control of oral diseases.
The Public Health Ministry is targeting sweet drinks in its latest campaign to curb Thais’ health-damaging addiction to sugar.
On average, each Thai person consumes 25.5 teaspoons of sugar per day – four times more than the World Health Organisation’s recommended limit.
In response, the ministry on Friday signed a memo of understanding with health agencies to promote reduced-sugar beverages.
Thailand began taxing beverages that contain more than 6 grams of sugar per 100ml in 2017, noted Public Health Deputy Minister Satit Pituthecha. The tax is adjusted every two years in a bid to reduce excess consumption of sugar and to allow the industrial sector to adjust gradually.
The ministry aims to build health literacy among the public with health-promotion activities, lower-sugar recipes for drinks, and more responsible marketing.
Recent research by the University of Zurich found that consuming excess sugar doubles the body’s fat production in the liver. In the long run, this can add up to the development of diabetes or fatty liver disease.
By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Robert Langreth
Moderna Inc. said the first children have been dosed in a clinical trial of its coronavirus vaccine in kids from six months to less than 12 years old.
The phase 2-phase 3 trial is being conducted in conjunction with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the company said Tuesday in a statement. The study is expected to enroll approximately 6,750 participants in the U.S. and Canada.
The two-part study will look at three doses in the youngest children and two doses in older kids in its first phase. An interim analysis will be conducted to determine what dose will be used in the second part of the study. Kids who receive the vaccine will be followed for 12 months.
“This pediatric study will help us assess the potential safety and immunogenicity of our coronavirus vaccine candidate in this important younger age population,” Moderna Chief Executive Officer Stephane Bancel said.
For adults, Moderna’s vaccine was found to be safe and 94.1% effective at preventing covid-19, and it appears to work well across demographic groups and in people with underlying medical conditions. It is given in a two-dose regimen.
Moderna got emergency authorization for use of the shot in people ages 18 and older from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in December. It has since become a key component of the immunization campaign in the U.S., with more than 52 million Moderna doses administered as of Monday, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
A coronavirus vaccine developed by Maryland biotechnology company Novavax was effective, particularly in preventing severe cases of illness, in two trials conducted in areas of the world overrun by concerning variants of the virus, the company announced Thursday. The vaccine was markedly less effective in stopping mild or moderate cases in South Africa, where a variant capable of dodging immunity emerged late last year.
The results back up an interim analysis released in January and provide a window into the challenges presented by the variants – but also underscore the largely robust protection offered by vaccination. The vaccine appeared 96% effective against the original strain of the virus, on par with the most effective authorized vaccines, and protected completely against severe illness caused by variants – even as its ability to prevent milder symptoms eroded.
“Our take on this is this is a very good result. It is important to prevent severe disease; it would be ideal to prevent all disease,” said Gregory Glenn, president of research and development at Novavax.
In its final analysis, which has not yet been peer-reviewed or published, the company said that its vaccine was 96% effective against mild, moderate and severe cases of covid-19 caused by the original strain. That dropped, modestly, to 86% against the B.1.1.7 variant first detected in the United Kingdom. In South Africa, where a variant called B.1.351 has become dominant, the vaccine was 55% effective against any cases of covid-19 among participants who were not infected with HIV.
But it was 100% effective against severe disease, including against the variants. There were five severe cases of covid-19 in the United Kingdom trial, all in people who received the placebo, and five severe cases in the South African trial, also among people who received the placebo.
“A trend we’re seeing, even with these variants, is that these vaccines are retaining high efficacy against severe disease,” said Kathleen Neuzil, director of the Center for Vaccine Development and Global Health at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. “I really loved seeing the 100 percent efficacy against severe disease.”
The new findings also add nuance to an initial analysis of the Novavax data that suggested people with prior infections might not be protected against future illness, a preliminary but concerning signal. Scientists initially found those people were no less likely to be infected than people not previously exposed.
But after following those study participants for longer, scientists found prior infection may offer a “late protective effect” against reinfection, a company news release stated. The rate of illness among people who had signs in their blood of prior infection was about half as high as for those who had no prior infection.
Glenn said that at this point, there were only theories and no clear explanations of that result.
The company will present the data to regulatory agencies worldwide, including the Food and Drug Administration. A large, 30,000-person test of the vaccine is ongoing in the United States and Mexico.
From February 28 to March 9, 33,621 people nationwide have been inoculated against Covid-19 and 2,984 have reported mild side-effects, the Public Health Ministry said on Thursday.
So far, people have only been administered the Sinovac vaccine from China, with AstraZeneca jabs planned to kick off on Friday.
Dr Chawetsan Namwat, acting director of the emergency disease and health hazards control division under the ministry’s Department of Disease Control, said the most common side-effects to the vaccine are swelling at the injection site, dizziness, low fever, body ache, etc, which can be relieved easily.
So far, 2,984 people have reported reactions or 8.8 per cent of all inoculated, which is very small compared to studies that say one in three people react adversely to the vaccine.
“Even after both doses of the vaccine have been administered, the World Health Organisation reiterates that people still need to wear a mask, wash their hands and maintain social distancing. This is because it takes time for the immune system to fully recover. The vaccine only prevents death and serious illness. It will take a long time before one that can prevent infection is found. So, we cannot let our guards down even after getting vaccinated,” Dr Chawetsan warned.
Thailand has, so far, received 200,000 doses of CoronaVac from China’s Sinovac Biotech and 117,600 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine.
Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha was the first person in Thailand to receive the AstraZeneca jab.
The consumption of raw chicken can result in severe diarrhoea, food poisoning and gastrointestinal infections, the Department of Health warned on Wednesday.
Chicken sashimi, which has become a trend in Japan, is now being sold in some Thai restaurants and has even gone viral on the net, the department’s director-general Suwanchai Wattanayingcharoenchai said.
“People should only consume cooked chicken meat because raw or frozen chicken may contain salmonella, which causes diarrhoea, food poisoning or gastrointestinal infection,” he said.
“The meat may also contain the gnathostoma spinigerum parasite, which causes blindness or encephalitis.”
He said chicken farm owners can prevent the spread of salmonella by screening the health of their chickens and staff.
“To kill the bacteria, the chicken meat should be washed in water and cooked on high heat for at least five minutes,” he said. “Consumers should also check details on the package, such as manufacturing and expiry dates.”
Suwanchai also said chicken meat can be stored for up to five days at a temperature of 0 to -5 degrees Celsius or for up to 12 months in a -18 degrees Celsius freezer.
“All cooked food should be warmed before consuming and people should wash their hands with soap before and after eating,” he added.
Air pollution due to a forest fire led to an increase in the number of respiratory patients in Chiang Mai on Wednesday.
According to an IQAir report, Chiang Mai ranks as the world’s third most polluted city, with PM2.5 (particles less than 2.5 micrometres in diameter) readings at 118.7 micrograms per cubic metre (μg/m3). Chiang Mai was earlier the globe’s most polluted city for three consecutive days.
Thailand’s standard for safe levels of PM2.5 is 50 μg/m3, much more than the World Health Organisation’s safety limit of 25 μg/m3.
Dr Aphinant Tantiwut
Dr Aphinant Tantiwut, a medicine expert at Lanna Hospital, said patients with respiratory, asthma or heart diseases have increased by 10 per cent, adding that air pollution has also affected patients who have skin diseases or allergies.
He advised residents to wear N95 masks, which fare better than ordinary face masks used by the public against Covid-19.
“People should pay extra attention to their health and avoid outdoor activities. Those at risk, such as the elderly and bed-ridden patients, must be in a confined or air-conditioned room and see the doctor immediately if they have any symptoms,” he said.
Separately, the Save Chiang Mai volunteer group has cooperated with traffic police to deliver N95 masks to the public as these are priced higher than ordinary face masks.
“We would like to ask the government to launch a campaign advising people to wear N95 masks as ordinary face masks can’t prevent people from the toxic haze,” group member Thanawat Weeraphongkamon said.
By The Washington Post · Lena H. Sun, Lenny Bernstein
WASHINGTON – Federal health officials released guidance Monday that gives fully vaccinated Americans more freedom to socialize and engage in routine daily activities, providing a pandemic-weary nation a first glimpse of what a new normal may look like in the months ahead.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said people who are two weeks past their final shot may visit indoors with unvaccinated members of a single household at low risk of severe disease, without wearing masks or distancing. That would free many vaccinated grandparents who live near their unvaccinated children and grandchildren to gather for the first time in a year. The guidelines continue to discourage visits involving long-distance travel, however.
The CDC also said fully vaccinated people can gather indoors with those who are also fully vaccinated. And they do not need to quarantine, or be tested after exposure to the coronavirus, as long as they have no symptoms.
Peter Hotez, co-director of the Texas Children’s Center for Vaccine Development, applauded the advice, but said it has taken too long for the CDC to tell an exhausted public when their masks could come off.
“The sooner we move to telling people if you’re fully vaccinated, you don’t have to wear masks, that will be an incentive for people to get vaccinated,” Hotez said.
The five-page guidelines offer a road map of sorts to those who have made it through the rocky vaccine rollout to resuming aspects of daily life that have been on hold for more than a year. They come as states have begun reopening, and government and public health officials are racing to vaccinate people as fast as possible to outpace highly transmissible versions of the virus spreading in nearly every state.
After a slow start, the pace of inoculations is accelerating, with 60 million people in the United States having received one shot and more than 31 million people now fully vaccinated as of Monday, or about 9% of the population, according to CDC. On Saturday, 2.9 million doses were administered, a record, while about 2.2 million people on average are getting vaccinated daily. President Joe Biden has vowed to have enough supply for every adult who wants a shot by late May, raising hopes of a return to normal life.
The country is “starting to turn a corner,” Andy Slavitt, White House senior adviser on the covid-19 response, said in a briefing Monday, with the guidance highlighting “what a world looks like where we move beyond covid-19.”
CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said the recommendations sought to balance potential risk to those who are unvaccinated, and impacts on community transmission, against the benefit of “getting back to some of the things that we love in life” for those who are inoculated. She and others warned that millions more people need to be vaccinated before everyone can stop following covid-19 precautions.
CDC will continue to update this initial guidance, perhaps loosening travel restrictions if new infections continue to decrease as vaccinations increase, Walensky said. But with more than 90% of the population still unvaccinated and levels of virus high, even those who have received the shots “might get breakthrough infections with lesser amounts of virus,” she said, referring to a fully vaccinated person getting infected.
For now, officials are continuing to discourage travel because “every time that there is a surge in travel, we have a surge in cases in this country,” Walensky said. “We know that many of our variants have emerged from international places, and we know that the travel corridor is a place where people are mixing a lot.”
The guidance outlines several ways that fully vaccinated people can return to their old routines, although it is more general than what some might have hoped for. It doesn’t explicitly say, for instance, whether vaccinated grandparents can hug and kiss their unvaccinated grandchildren, but appears to endorse such behavior by saying vaccinated people can safely gather indoors with those in one unvaccinated household without masks or physical distancing, as long as no one is at risk of severe disease.
A growing body of evidence suggests that fully vaccinated people are less likely to spread the virus to others. While some prevention measures continue to be necessary, the benefits of reducing social isolation “may outweigh the residual risk of fully vaccinated people becoming ill with covid-19” or transmitting the virus to others, the guidance says.
In addition, relaxing restrictions for vaccinated people “may help improve covid-19 vaccine acceptance and uptake,” CDC says. “Therefore, there are several activities that fully vaccinated people can resume now, at low risk to themselves, while being mindful of the potential risk of transmitting the virus to others.”
Small gatherings likely represent minimal risk – with the safest situations being for the fully inoculated to get together with one another in private settings, such as a dinner among vaccinated friends in their homes, the CDC says.
But risk increases as gatherings get larger, take place outside the home, or include more unvaccinated people, who may have come from places with high rates of transmission.
The level of caution people need to exercise should be determined by the characteristics of those who are unvaccinated, the CDC says. Unvaccinated people from one household, or people living under one roof who are at low risk for severe covid-19, for instance, can visit with vaccinated people indoors without wearing masks, such as grandchildren visiting their grandparents. But if the unvaccinated neighbors stop by, the visit should move outdoors or to a well-ventilated space, and everyone should don masks because there is a higher risk of virus spread among them.
If a fully vaccinated person visits with an unvaccinated friend who is 70, and therefore at risk of severe disease, the visit should also take place outdoors, with masks and physical distancing, the guidance says.
Vaccinated people should also continue to follow CDC’s travel recommendations, which include delaying travel while cases are extremely high. That means vaccinated grandparents are advised against flying to see their grandchildren. Grandparents can visit with their unvaccinated children and grandchildren “who are healthy and who are local,” Walensky said.
And vaccinated people must still follow the same requirements before, during and after domestic or international travel, including wearing masks. The CDC requires all international travelers to show proof that they had tested negative for the coronavirus before boarding flights to the United States.
In public settings, vaccinated people should continue to follow all public health precautions, including wearing a well-fitted mask, physical distancing and avoiding poorly ventilated spaces. The virus has been shown to spread in settings such as gyms and bars.
The CDC said fully vaccinated people who have been exposed to someone with suspected or confirmed covid-19 do not have to quarantine or be tested if they remain without symptoms. But if the exposure takes place in certain crowded settings that increase the risk of spread, such as prisons and group homes, they must still quarantine for 14 days and get tested.
Advocates for older people embraced the loosened restrictions on social interaction. Many older people, especially those who live alone, they said, have spent the past year in virtual isolation, hunkered down against a virus that mainly kills people over 65.
“If the CDC is offering new ways for older people to connect more in a way that’s safe and healthy, this is really good news,” said Katie Smith Sloan, president and chief executive officer of LeadingAge, which represents 5,000 nonprofit organizations that provide services to older people. “I think clarity is so important, and good communication around that. So we welcome this. It takes some of the mystery out of it.”
Bill Walsh, vice president for communications for AARP, the interest group that represents 38 million people 50 and older, said that “after nearly a year of the pandemic, we’re grateful for any signs of return to life as we know it.
“To the extent this allows people, grandkids, families, loved ones in nursing homes or assisted living [to interact], we welcome that,” he added. “We’ve heard over the past year some heart-wrenching stories of family separation.”
But Walsh warned that health officials have a long way to go to eliminate the trepidation many older people feel about safely resuming their old lives. He said many have struggled to apply vague and often conflicting information to their lives.
Those who have already begun resuming their lives said they are elated.
After Helen Boucher, an infectious-diseases doctor at Tufts Medical Center in Boston, was vaccinated in December, she began shopping at the grocery store again, and wearing a mask, visited her in-laws, who are 88 and 90 years old, to bring them kielbasa, macaroni and cheese, and a box of chocolates.
“I felt good that I could bring them stuff,” Boucher said. But she kept her visit short since the couple had received their first shot two and a half weeks before. “I had not been willing to put them at risk.”
Hotez and his wife are both fully vaccinated and traveled by plane this past weekend to visit with their two oldest grown children, whom they haven’t seen in 14 months. One has been vaccinated and the other was recently infected.
“The risk of transmission between us is very low,” he said. “It’s as good as it’s ever going to be. Risk is never going to go down to zero.”
Anthony Fauci, Biden’s chief medical adviser, who has been vaccinated, said he will finally embrace his daughter once she is also inoculated. “I’m going to have her over to the house, and I’m going to give her a big hug that I haven’t been able to do for a year,” he told Chris Cuomo recently.
By The NationA Chula veterinary science lecturer has developed biorobots made from safe and effective materials to deliver time-released nutrients to the body, adding value to Thai herbs.
“Food, drugs, dietary supplements, no matter how great the claim, if they dissolve upon entry into the body before they can be absorbed, they are useless”, said Dr Teerapong Yata of the biochemistry unit of the Department of Physiology, Faculty of Veterinary Science, Chulalongkorn University. For this reason, he has developed biorobots to deliver herbs to solve this problem.
“We call this nutrition innovation ‘robots’, due to their ingenious mechanisms that can release the polymers covering the food surface in a timely manner to allow the intestinal wall to absorb nutrients or active ingredients that the body needs. This helps reduce the loss of nutrients during the digestive process when some nutrients may be destroyed by gastric acids,” Dr Teerapong said on his invention.
The key technology behind the microscopic robots is to coat the nutrients and active ingredients with nanoparticles by microencapsulation and nanoencapsulation. This technology prevents the nutrients from being destroyed during the digestive process in the stomach.
The materials used for the biorobots are natural polymers, including seaweed, shrimp and crab shells. These materials are inexpensive and safe for human and animal consumption. They are also biodegradable. The biorobots are being used to coat herbs like turmeric, Centella asiatica, black sesame, and cordyceps, he said.
Chulalongkorn University has already patented the biorobots with the Department of Intellectual Property. Today, biorobots are used in the food industry, especially in health foods, or functional foods that have added antioxidants or vitamins –- a trend of the future.
Dr Teerapong Yata
“Consumers will benefit from biorobots, by receiving important nutrients that can be absorbed effectively, eliminating the need to consume a large number of supplements that can adversely affect the liver,” Dr Teerapong added.
Biorobots are also used in animal feed, for instance in the case of antibiotic-resistant animals nano-coating is used in herbs such as essential oil, timed to activate at the end of the animals’ large intestine, which is full of pathogens.
Dr Teeraphong said that “biorobots would also benefit owners of Thai herbs businesses needing to differentiate themselves from their competitors.”
WASHINGTON – Temperature-scanning devices that check for fevers in schools, workplaces and public venues across the United States distort the results in a way that could overlook the telltale sign of a coronavirus infection, according to new research that casts doubt on the systems’ effectiveness in helping people resume normal life.
The thermal cameras and “temperature tablet” kiosks have been heralded as a critical first line of defense against new pandemic outbreaks. But in a new study of the scanners by the surveillance research organization IPVM, researchers warn that the tools are dangerously ineffective, raising the risk that infected people could be waved through medical screening checkpoints and go on to spread the virus unchecked.
On Thursday night, shortly after The Washington Post discussed the research findings with the Food and Drug Administration, the agency issued a public alert warning that improper use of the devices could lead to inaccurate measurements and “present potentially serious public health risks.”
The agency also announced that it was sending official “warning letters” to one of the discussed companies, as well as three others, for selling “unapproved, uncleared, and unauthorized thermal imaging systems.”
In the letter to the company, Certify Global, FDA officials said use of the devices carried the risk of incorrect detection, particularly if used to scan multiple people simultaneously, and that a person with an undetected fever may “be less likely to adhere to infection prevention and control guidelines.”
The researchers found that seven widely used scanners attempt to compensate for the imprecisions of lower-cost sensors and the unpredictable factors of real-world tests by “normalizing” the readings of people’s temperatures.
But that “compensating algorithm,” they argue, severely undermines the devices’ medical usefulness. A feverish person with a core temperature of 100.4 degrees, their research found, could be assessed by the test devices as having a temperature of 98 degrees, well within the healthy range.
“The utility of these devices as fever screeners is now highly questionable, and arguably a risk to public health, because they actively report fevers as normal,” said Conor Healy, the lead researcher of the study set for publication in the Journal of Biomedical Optics.
Representatives of the tested companies Certify, Dahua, Meridian and ZKTeco disputed the findings, saying their systems don’t manipulate temperature readings but in some cases use software techniques to “self-calibrate” to their environment.
“The deviation setting is not intended to ‘distort’ results. It’s designed to allow customers to receive alerts only when actual threats exist,” said Larry Reed, the chief executive of ZKTeco, which makes a “SpeedFace” thermal-imaging system that sells for about $3,800. “On a hot summer day in Arizona, [non-feverish] employees might trigger the device alarm all day if it’s set at 101 degrees and the employees are scanned upon immediately entering the building.”
Peter Plassmann, a thermography expert whose U.K.-based company Thermetrix designs thermal-imaging systems for medical use, said the research highlights how companies have sought to bolster their business by oversimplifying how well the devices are supposed to work.
“That’s generally the problem with infrared imaging: It’s so deceptively easy,” he said. “You point the camera at somebody, you get a nice colorful image and you get a temperature reading. Great. But in reality, it’s all rubbish. There are so many factors you need to consider.”
Companies have promoted the thermal-imaging systems for their ability to measure temperatures more quickly and at a safer distance than traditional and infrared thermometers that measure temperature from a person’s forehead, ear or mouth.
The scanners use infrared sensors to analyze the heat radiating from a person’s skin – a close but imperfect reflection of their core body temperature – and some systems are advertised as being able to assess multiple people in a passing crowd.
The FDA typically requires thermal scanners and other medical-use devices be tested for safety and effectiveness under a process known as 510(k) clearance. But in April, the agency said it would no longer require premarket reviews or object to unvetted devices that did not “create an undue risk.”
A surge of new thermal scanners followed, said the researchers, who counted more than 200 companies now making or advertising such devices. Many of the companies first jumped into the market last year without any previous experience in thermal-imaging or medical devices.
The FDA has said the change was a necessary move to address fears of device shortages. But the researchers said they worry that such untested systems are now widely distributed across the country and could fuel a “false sense of security” that could imperil public health.
Thermal scanners face a huge flaw in their ability to detect coronavirus infections: Roughly 40% of infected people won’t have a fever at all, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated last year. And a person’s temperature can shift wildly based on many factors, including if they’re overweight, stressed, menopausal or wearing heavy clothing, or if they recently exercised, stepped out of a hot car, or drank alcohol or caffeine.
But because there is no immediate alternative for detection, many officials have seen the fever scans as perhaps their only way of identifying someone who could spark a new outbreak. Some companies and local governments have spent tens of thousands of dollars per camera to bolster their defenses.
The FDA has worked to adjust Americans’ expectations about how useful the systems can be. The agency says in official guidelines that thermal scanners are “not effective at determining if someone definitively has covid-19”; that they “have not been shown to be accurate when used to take the temperature of multiple people at the same time”; that their accuracy depends heavily on “careful set-up and operation”; and that “their effectiveness as part of efforts to reduce the spread of disease has been mixed.”
Bill Maisel, the chief medical officer and director of the Office of Device Evaluation at the FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health, said the research identified several systems that “didn’t have the level of accuracy that we would expect.” Even after the premarket review change last year, he said, the FDA still required all devices to meet certain performance expectations. The agency, he added, regularly monitors for problematic systems and works with the companies to address errors when their products are found to underperform.
The devices, he said, should play only a limited role when assessing risks during the pandemic, and they are no replacement for social distancing, mask-wearing or more traditional medical screening.
Thermal-imaging devices are “imperfect, and they are particularly imperfect when screening for covid,” he said. “The inaccuracy of devices is one of the aspects that contributes to the imperfection.”
The IPVM researchers did not test traditional thermometers, and their findings confirmed that some FDA-cleared devices returned near-perfect accuracy. But all of the thermal scanners they tested appeared to deliberately “normalize” high temperature readings into a healthier, non-fever-like range: Colder readings were pulled higher, while hotter readings were pulled down.
The tested systems relied on lower-cost hardware with dramatically lower precision: Several scanners used a sensor with a resolution of about 1,000 pixels – far more limited than the 76,000-pixel sensor found in one of the FDA-vetted machines they used as a control device.
To get an accurate temperature reading, international guidelines for medical electrical equipment say the systems should only be used in controlled environments with regularly calibrated devices on people who are consistently “prepared”: People walking in from an indoor waiting room, for example, would offer very different results than others who had lined up waiting in the sun.
But the companies, Healy said, appeared to navigate that challenge by making the systems appear to work consistently across a wide range of ever-changing conditions.
The systems, Healy said, were designed “to maintain an appearance of normal function despite poor device capabilities or screening conditions, enabling manufacturers to cover up performance issues while selling to a much wider set of use-cases.”
IPVM is a surveillance research group that examines camera hardware, imaging devices and other technical tools for its members, largely in the security industry. Its researchers examined the systems in a temperature-controlled warehouse laboratory in Pennsylvania.
The tested companies are not household names, but they form the technical backbone of the screening systems used in schools, retail stores and workplaces nationwide. The devices range in price, from $600 to $13,000, and are promoted as being able to conduct person-by-person entry scans or assess visitors en masse.
Certify, a Maryland-based seller of devices found in casinos and hotels, advertises on its website that it offers “the #1 Fever Detection & Thermal Scanning Solution in the Marketplace” and can “replace manual scanning.”
Certify spokeswoman Jasmine Neisser said the system does not alter high temperatures but does set a minimum temperature level that will return a 96 degree reading if the scan fails. The system, she said, “uses world-class manufactured sensors for thermal applications, which are rigorously tested for accuracy.”
Certify Vice President Tim Goodwin had said in a LinkedIn post that devices like the SnapXT Pro, its $2,000 thermal scanner with an eight-inch touch screen, could be found in “more than 75 percent of NFL stadiums.” An NFL spokesperson disputed that claim, saying the devices are used in roughly a dozen of the league’s 30 stadiums nationwide. (Neisser said that the comment related to the number of open stadiums when the post was written last year and that at the time Certify devices had been deployed in five of the eight stadiums then open to visitors.)
Plassmann said the medical-equipment industry standards for deploying such systems, which cover everything from the lighting and humidity of screening rooms to how much time people should acclimate before their test, are often ignored in the real world, where unpredictable conditions and public circumstances can vary wildly and skew the results.
He said he has seen an influx of companies that offer glossy marketing materials but little commitment to the best practices for public-health use, and he said he is concerned that their widespread deployment could undermine efforts to guard against new outbreaks.
“It needs to be done properly,” he said, “or it can do more harm than good.”
.jpg)
SootinClaimon.Com 