To stem the 2019-nCov coronavirus epidemic, which has already infected more than 30,000 people, China has gone out of its way. Frightened that residents who have been infected in Wuhan, the epicenter of the virus, and then left town before being quarantined, will contaminate other Chinese, Beijing is trying to track them down with great facial recognition and custom personal data.
Five million people are said to have stayed in the city or at least in Hubei province, of which it is the capital, until January 23. So many people to identify, which makes the task of the authorities immeasurable and requires many human resources.
Authorities in Nanjing, capital of east China's Jiangs Province, reported online how they managed to locate a man who hadn't told anyone about a recent trip to Wuhan. As a precaution, he had imposed himself a quarantine, without revealing his recent stay to the authorities. In the middle of the night, police knocked on his door to check his temperature after managing to find him by scanning databases of travelers.
Spotted out of quarantine by facial recognition
Reuters also reports the story of a man who returned to Hangzhou after a business trip. His license plate was located near Wenzhou, where several cases of contamination were identified and the police forced him to observe a two-week confinement at his home. But the bored man decided to go out after 12 days. A facial recognition camera identified him near a lake and notified his superior.
Many municipalities promise bonuses in the event of whistleblowing, others set up electronic registration systems. In some districts of Beijing, residents are forced to scan a QR code with their smartphone to complete an online questionnaire: they must notably specify their address, details of the means of transport recently used and indicate whether they have "recently" visited in Hubei or frequented by anyone coming from this region.
Applications based on traveler lists
The arsenal used is not new, for this country which uses the data of its citizens on a large scale and easily resorts to the deployment of artificial intelligence technologies. On Tuesday the National Health Commission urged local governments to use "the data to monitor, identify (priority) cases and effectively forecast the evolution of the epidemic in real time". "We must strengthen the sharing of information between [...] public security, transport, and other administrations," she also urged, according to a press release.
Zhu Jiansheng, a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, told the Xinhua news agency that the authorities are using technology to find people who may have contracted the virus and who have taken a train. “We collect relevant information on the passenger, the train number, the carrier number and information on the passengers who were close to the person. That is to say those seated on the three rows of seats before and after the person, "he explains.
Since the spread of the virus began, somewhat special online applications have also emerged: based on lists published by the state press, they offer travelers to check if they have not taken the same flight or plane than a person suspected of being infected. In Beijing, a district manager in charge of a residential complex with 2,400 apartments said that data related to flights and trains made it possible to monitor the recent movements of each resident.
Face photography and temperature control
Chinese tech firms are competing to help fight the epidemic, planning to deliver medical supplies by drone or mapping the spread of the virus.
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The objective is above all to identify people suffering from fever, an ordinary symptom of coronavirus contamination: everywhere, neighborhood or building guards check visitors with a thermometer. Public transport services are testing sophisticated systems for detecting passengers with abnormal temperatures in the crowd, using thermal cameras and "intelligent" software.
In Beijing, a system developed by Chinese internet giant Baidu monitors passengers at Qinghe station via facial recognition technologies and infrared sensors, automatically photographing each face. If the body temperature exceeds 37.3 degrees, the strident alarm is triggered, resulting in a second (manual) check. According to Baidu, its system can control more than 200 people per minute - far more than the narrow gates of thermal detection of airports.
The Chinese facial recognition expert, Megvii, has also urgently developed a similar system, tested in a metro station in Beijing. According to him, the team has optimized their models "to effectively detect body temperatures even when only the forehead is exposed".