I land in Hong Kong and am immediately swept into an ocean of people moving like a current is taking them. Taller than average, I can see over the flowing current of heads. I can’t understand the airport announcements, I can’t read the signs. Out of this ocean current, I am signaled by a very official officer woman pointing to my head. She’s wearing a surgical mask which I already had seen a few of. I keep flowing with the current and take off my glasses. She signals again more frustrated and rattles hat-hat-hat. The official then points to a picture sign with a ball cap separated from the head. I get it. I’m wearing my Wello hat. I take it off. I turn the corner past the sign. I keep up with the flow turn around, walking backwards and ask why? She says, “temperature”. “We want see (sick) body temperature.” I get it. Ironic, my Wello hat got in the way.
A “Temperature Check” in Hong Kong’s busy transit area. April 2014.
Onward 300 feet a kiosk called, “Temperature Check”. Two men doing nothing of the sort that I could tell. But look up in the air, it’s a camera at 10 feet overhead. And another officer just standing in the flow, with a mask. The men explained the operation. What is this? It’s because of SARs, avian flu and its H1N1. He asked me why I ask and I explained Wello. “I like very much” one says. Normal for some are fevers for everyone. In fact a less healthy person can be identified incorrectly with fever while an otherwise healthier person escapes detection. Ironical that the accuracy not of temperature but of the febrile state is critical to get a lock at disease spread.
Wello is about disease spread. Disease spread can be but is truly not a discipline within medicine. Disease spread is an engineering and epidemiology study. It is about the conditions of transmission – indoor air quality. The conditions in which regional populations synchronize to be more susceptible or less. And then ultimately what Hong Kong is brilliantly executing – screening and rejection of the true one and only source – the infection person, the febrile person, the super-spreader.
How cool is that?
Rik Heller, is the President and CEO of Wello.