Face recognition tech fights Covid in Chinese city
BEIJING/PARIS: Facial recognition tech linked to personal health codes has been rolled out in the Chinese city of Ruili bordering Myanmar as authorities seek to squash a Covid-19 outbreak.
China is one of the world’s most surveilled countries, with the government rushing to install more than 200 million CCTV cameras to “cover all public spaces” in the past five years.
Surveillance has been widely used to combat Covid-19 in China, which was the first country to adopt a QR code system to log test results and track contacts. But this is the first publicly reported instance of facial recognition being used to track a person’s movements and health status as they enter and exit residential areas, supermarkets, transport hubs and other public places.
“Everyone who comes in and out needs to have their [health] code and face scanned to pass,” officials in Ruili, in Yunnan province, told reporters.
Ruili discovered 155 cases over the past week in one of the worst coronavirus flare-ups in recent months to hit China, according to data published on Tuesday. “Security tools such as facial recognition cameras, smart door locks and road barriers have been put in place in key areas,” local authorities said.
The scanners can also check the temperatures of individuals, China National Radio reported. There are no details on how long the database will hold records or whether officials will shut down the system, which is monitored by the city’s pandemic prevention task force, once the outbreak is contained.
Ruili, a city of more than 210,000 people, is a major crossing point from Muse in neighbouring Myanmar, which has seen escalating unrest since a February 1 coup, raising fears that people will flood across the Chinese border to escape the violence.
Nearly half of the new cases reported in the past week were Myanmar nationals, according to the Yunnan provincial health commission, although it was not clear how they entered the city.
China has adopted a zero-risk approach to coronavirus clusters. It has largely curbed the spread of the disease since it first emerged in the central city of Wuhan in late 2019, with tough border controls, mass testing, lockdowns and tie-ups with big tech for tracking.
Gene-editing ‘blocks virus transmission’
Scientists have used CRISPR gene-editing technology to successfully block the transmission of the Sars-CoV-2 virus in infected human cells, according to research released on Tuesday that could pave the way for Covid-19 treatment.
Writing in the journal Nature Communications, researchers in Australia said the tool was effective against viral transmissions in lab tests, adding that they hoped to begin animal trials soon.
CRISPR, which allows scientists to alter DNA sequences and modify gene function, has already shown promise in eliminating the genetic coding that drives the development of children’s cancer.
The team in Tuesday’s study used an enzyme, CRISPR-Cas13b, that binds to relevant RNA sequences on the virus and degrades the genome it needs to replicate inside human cells.