Police in Malaysia are using drones to detect people with high temperatures in public spaces as part of disease prevention measures, media reports said.
The drones, which can detect people’s temperatures as high as 20m above the ground, emit a red light to alert the authorities if someone has a high reading, national news agency Bernama reported.
Malaysia last week entered a near total national lockdown in an attempt to halt rising daily infections, which had reached more than 9,000 by the end of last month.
Although daily cases have since fallen, Malaysian Director-General of Health Noor Hisham Abdullah has said that most of the new infections and deaths were from unknown contacts.
“One of the reasons is the emergence of new variants in the community that have higher infectivity and mortality rates,” he said in a statement yesterday, urging people to stay home.
Under the lockdown rules, only two people from each household are allowed to go out to buy essentials, do non-contact sports or seek medical treatment near to their home.
Schools and shopping malls are shut, although much of the manufacturing sector has continued to operate with a reduced workforce.
Malaysian police have previously said that they would use drones to enforce earlier travel restrictions, with officers in some areas also stating that they would carry out surprise home visits to ensure that people were following rules.
Terengganu Police Chief Rohaimi Md Isa told Bernama that officers had begun using the temperature monitoring drones in the past few days.
“Although we have 157 monitoring teams, they move from one location to another. They are unable to monitor every location at once, including detecting symptomatic individuals in public places,” he said.
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