Swine flu detection with thermal scans — hot or not?

Hoping to spot feverish passengers who may be infected with H1N1 swine flu, airport officials in Mexico, Asia and elsewhere are buying thermal-imaging devices from manufacturers such as Fluke in Everett and Oregon-based Flir.

(How about an advertising slogan? "Get 'em while they're hot.")

Many health authorities, however, are cool to the idea. A spokesman for the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva says the global agency "generally doesn't believe in this measure."

Dr. Jeff Duchin, chief of communicable-disease control for Public Health — Seattle & King County, considers them "an unproven technology" based on their performance during the last global disease scare, the 2003 outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS).

Still, companies are promoting the current generation of devices — basically heat-sensing cameras with analytical software — as a smart and effective tool for identifying travelers who should get additional scrutiny.

Fluke, which this past week announced a $500,000 order from Mexican authorities, says its portable infrared thermal imagers "can be very beneficial to public health." In airports, schools, factories, offices and other gathering places, it says, authorities can "quickly scan and measure the skin temperature of large numbers of people. Those who show temperatures higher than normal can then be isolated for further evaluation to help prevent the spread of disease."

Spokesman Larry Wilson says the order for about 40 scanners for Mexico's airports "is the first related to this outbreak" that he knows of, though Fluke's distributors may have booked others. Benito Juarez International Airport in Mexico City already had such units, he says.

New sales at Flir are "in the hundreds" says senior vice president Tony Trunzo. "We've seen a nice flow of orders from this, there's no question about it."

Eight major Australian airports deployed thermal scanners April 30 on orders from the nation's health minister; Singapore's National Arts Council performance halls and several Indonesian airports did the same, according to news reports.

By contrast, local public health and airport officials here say they aren't aware of any U.S. agency using the devices.

Thermal scanning in Vancouver and Toronto during the SARS epidemic seemed to accomplish little. In screening nearly 4.6 million passengers, scanners from several manufacturers, including Flir, spotted 1,435 passengers with elevated temperatures — though none turned out to have SARS, according to a 2004 report by Canada's Public Health Agency.

Hong Kong, close to the outbreak's epicenter in China, conducted temperature screening of 36.3 million people at border entry points, but identified only 1,921 with fevers and zero who turned out to have SARS, a government report found. Hong Kong apparently did better using written health declarations filled out by travelers themselves — it spotted two SARS carriers that way.

One problem is that travelers infected with flu may not yet be showing symptoms such as fever, says a WHO spokesman. Then there's the issue of false positives — "thermal scanners measure the skin and not the core temperature," which can be affected "by physical activity, stress, alcohol and drug use, nicotine, caffeine, circulatory problems and injury," says the Canadian report. Operator training and environmental factors, such as air temperature and currents, also can affect the measurements.

Fluke's Wilson says the devices are sensitive enough to show the heat left on a carpet after a person steps off it. But he acknowledges that if a passenger has above-normal skin temperature, "It could be because they ran all the way from the ticket gate, trying to catch their plane."

Trunzo says his company "learned a fair bit" from deployments during the SARS scare, and improved both its software and its training for operators. The software now focuses on a spot at the inner corner of the eye that best indicates core body temperature, he says.

Duchin, the Seattle-King County epidemiologist, has another concern beyond the thermal scanners' accuracy. There's little point in trying to catch travelers with H1N1, he says, because it's already circled the globe: "The cat's out of the bag."

Downtown

Seattle parcel

for sale, below cost

"For Sale" signs went up outside the old, now-vacant Watermark Credit Union headquarters building in downtown Seattle a few days ago, emblems of yet another modestly grand plan dashed by the real-estate downturn.

Three years ago developer Schnitzer West proposed a 32-story condo tower on the site, across from the Greyhound bus terminal at Eighth Avenue and Stewart Street. Later it traded away some of the property's development rights to get city approval to build a taller office tower next door, at 1918 Eighth.

Last spring Schnitzer came back with another proposal for the Watermark site, an 11-story office annex to 1918 Eighth.

City officials completed all the required land-use reviews. They gave Schnitzer preliminary approval to demolish the six-story building Watermark had occupied since 1978. Schnitzer closed on the property in early September. The credit union began moving out.

Then Washington Mutual went under and the downtown office market tanked. Rents started to drop. Vacancy rates rose.

Just to the east of the Watermark building, Schnitzer's 14-story 818 Stewart office building, which opened last fall, still is more than one-third empty. To the north, 36-story 1918 Eighth, scheduled for completion later this year, so far has no announced tenants.

A few months ago Schnitzer dropped its plans to build still more new office space on the Watermark site.

And now the property is for sale, for $8.5 million — $1.3 million less than Schnitzer paid for it just eight months ago.

— Eric Pryne

Comments? Send them to Rami Grunbaum: rgrunbaum@seattletimes.com or 206-464-8541