No more finger or thumb scanning; Covid-19 makes facial recognition and thermal scans the way to go

BEYOND the work-from-home orders to millions of office workers around the world, another major shift has impacted work trends following the Covid-19 health scare - the sudden avoidance and even abandonment of finger- and thumb-biometric scanning to mark staff attendance and ensure workplace security and hygiene.

For more than a decade, corporations large and small have adopted what appeared to be the logical technologies to track entry and exit of staff and contract workers - biometric finger scanning or the ubiquitous plastic access cards hung on a lanyard around the necks of millions of office and factory workers worldwide.

But as Covid-19 casts a long shadow over how we live, work and play, hundreds of corporations big and small, in government agencies as well as private sector, have suspended biometric attendance in recent weeks - before all but "essential service" workplaces were closed and people moved on to remote work.