By Modupe Gbadeyanka
The coronavirus pandemic is causing havoc across the globe, with medical professionals and health experts scrambling to control the spread of this disease.
In the absence of a vaccine, stringent social distancing norms and lockdown measures are the only way to slow down the virus at the moment.
In such a scenario, most tasks needing physical contact between people are impossible at the moment.
However, this is where facial recognition systems could come in handy, especially in countries like Nigeria which already has some experience in deploying and using such systems.
Nigeria is no stranger to facial recognition technology being used on a wide scale. It had launched a Universal Health Program in the Kwara State to provide primary medical care to over three million people in 2018, where authentication was done via facial recognition, by asking potential beneficiaries to take a selfie on their phones, which was then matched with existing medical records to prove eligibility.
This was done as fingerprint recognition would often fail, due to the worn out fingers of the state’s largely rural population.
Elsewhere, a Nigerian bank, Access Bank, had also launched a payment system based on facial biometrics. This would enable customers to make payments at locations without using a card, as the facial recognition technology would be used to verify the customer’s identity and authenticate payments. Of course, this sort of technology becomes even more important at this time of social distancing.
Facial recognition technology is already being extensively implemented in the gambling sector, or it was, before the current pandemic.
Facial recognition has been used at casinos and gambling venues across the world for various purposes.
In Australia, for example, one of the leading gambling operators conducted a trial using facial recognition, to identify potential underage gamblers.
Elsewhere, it has been used to track gamblers on the casino floor and identify problem gamblers, such as those who have been banned or have been identified and tagged as having gambling addictions.
It has also been used to identify high rollers and VIP gamblers, with those duties falling to floor managers and pit bosses earlier, who would need to physically scan and cover the floor to spot entrants for the VIP casino.
Now, however, with facial recognition, operators can instantly spot VIPs and direct managers to them for personalized service, thus improving their operations and increasing cashflow.
These examples show how facial recognition can be easily adapted for usage across countries, for authentication and verification in the absence of physical contact.
There are examples of countries using facial recognition for various uses during this time. Poland, for example, has launched a smartphone app which will be used to track and confirm that people in quarantine for 14 days are actually maintaining it.
People being quarantined are required to submit selfies periodically to show that the device is in their possession and that they are indoors, with a failure to comply resulting in a visit from the police.
Elsewhere, Russia has been trialing the use of facial recognition for payments at grocery stores, due to concerns over using coins and notes as they could potentially spread the virus.
In Malaysia, a combination of facial recognition and thermal scanning is being used at the King’s Palace to enable detection of potentially infected individuals.
These examples show how facial recognition and other biometric technologies could be adapted for use in these times, to ensure that services needing verification and authentication continue to take place securely and comfortably, thus ensuring that businesses can continue operations and revenue is not hit as badly as first feared.
Aduragbemi Omiyale 
Adedapo Adesanya