"false" high body temperature readings at work

[Yellowskies1988]

Covid or AIBU but the face scan machine at work has been "playing up" this week.

Staff been told to take hats off before they take the check, obviously can't have temperature read with face covered up.

Today it had alot of these "false readings" resulting in staff, not me, to wait outside 15 minutes for a retest at 5am and it was - 6.

Should the staff have been sent home to get a test or were they right to wait and have another test?

Doesn't bother me but was a big topic of discussion today, it's a big factory with about 500 people on the factory floor each shift

When I was leaving site I noticed the following on shift team leader on the carpark asking their staff to take hats off in their car.

Seems a bit suspicious to me especially since their have been alot of staff off self isolating in the last 21 days or so.

Were the staff wrong to stop on site if they had a high temperature reading?

In my workplace, after one high temp reading the employee is sent to an empty room, wait 10 minutes then retake the temp. 99.9% of the time the first reading was artificially high. Only 1 employee since April has had 2 high temps in a row and it was actually last week, they were sent home to isolate and tested negative.

We’re two passes too.
I run in occasionally and it’s a nightmare as I get freezing in my running clothes outside so I return to “normal” temp.

The one where I work usually scans me at around 35 degrees. I don't usually suffer from hypothermia - if someone had a high temp they'd clock in as normal!

I think it's fair to wait a few minutes without a hat on if the temp is being taken of their head. It will be artificially warm.

However I would question how reliable any face scanner is, I mean, it doesn't make contact with your body? How far into the building are you before it's taken?

If someone has a fever, I don't think 5 minutes in the cold is going to affect the results dramatically.

It does sound like they're sending them out in the hope that their temperature reduces enough to affect both surface temperature and body temperature readings.

@Sloelydoesit

The one where I work usually scans me at around 35 degrees. I don't usually suffer from hypothermia - if someone had a high temp they'd clock in as normal!

Yep the employees in the cold factory are often 35 degrees too . Temp checks are a nice idea but not accurate IME. Around 10/120 employees have had covid, all cases have been from household transmission, usually a partner who works in a care setting/school or a child at school. Obviously I'm not 100% sure, but all were already self isolating when they tested positive IFSWIM.

Fair enough. I wasn't sure if other places send staff off site straight away, I've no issue taking hat off the temperature reader is right by the entrance door and it's freezing and sends a chill, also when about 30 or so at a time are waiting to go in it gets a bit fresh.

Stop testing as it's a complete waste of time just way to try and show "they are doing something" ask about Doing lateral flow tests instead

The advice the DfE gave schools was not to bother testing temperature like that as readings were unreliable.

Mind you, so are the lateral flow tests we've been given to use, with a success rate of between 3 and 50% Lots of false negatives. Better than nothing though, but you can't rely on them to say that you don't have it. Just that they will pick up SOME of the asymptomatic cases.