By Emily Duggan
Granite State New Collaborative
As of early June, University of New Hampshire employees have to take their temperature within an hour and a half before arriving at the Durham, Manchester or Concord campuses, and self-report it onto the university portal with their secure logins.
The action comes as part of New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu’s Stay at Home 2.0. As businesses across the state begin to reopen, the state is requiring workers to take their own temperature before arriving at their workplace.
With temperature taking becoming part of the “new normal” as the state goes further into the coronavirus pandemic, some people are raising questions about the ethics and necessity of this mandate.
Dr. Peter Degnan from UNH Health & Wellness says that temperature taking is a mandatory step in checking COVID-19 symptoms, even though some people that test positive for the virus may not have a fever.
“When combined with other symptom screening questions, it [temperature taking] can be part of a more comprehensive strategy to help detect symptoms suggestive of possible COVID infection before an individual exposes others in the workplace,” he said.
When university employees record their temperature, they are asked a series of questions that start with the statement, “I attest that prior to coming into work on [day]...” with the answers ranging from “I have not tested positive for COVID-19” to asking if the person has experienced any of the other COVID-19 symptoms, like loss of smell, taste, or runny nose and sore throat.
Employees are also asked to record where they have been that day and where they plan on going while on any of the three UNH campuses. The university’s COVID hotline did not know what would happen if an employee declined screening. The questions are required by the state of New Hampshire and they meet the “state guidelines,” according to Dr. Degnan.
Dr. Charlotte Witt, professor of medical ethics at UNH, raises the question of “how much testing, tracing and quarenting is compatible with personal freedom that students have come to expect on college campuses?”
The university announced in their reopening plan that students will have to undergo COVID-19 testing prior to the start of classes.
“There will be pressure on students and faculty to release their medical records to UNH,” Dr. Witt said. “...There will be a new level of medical screening that raises important ethical questions, as well.”
However, Degnan pointed out that no additional health information is gathered, other than symptom screening for COVID-19. According to the UNH website, “supervisors will not see the information; they will only be told if an employee can or cannot report to work outside of home,” adding that the information supplied will be treated as confidential.
Nick Smith, a philosophy and ethics professor at UNH, explains that historically, “crises require exceptional measure for public safety.” Yet, once the coronavirus pandemic is over, it may be hard to go back to privacy expectations from beforehand, he said.
“In this pandemic, the state or the employers monitoring information such as our body temperatures and who we have been in contact with makes sense as a way to slow the spread of disease,” he said. “Emerging technology makes this feasible and cost effective. But it will also introduce new kinds of monitoring bioinformation and promote market innovation in technology that can read information about our body that we might not want to share.”
Already, there has been technology to burst out of the pandemic, as China unveiled a new smartphone, Honor Play 4 Pro, that will allow users to hold their phone up to their head and test their temperature. So far, there isn’t anything similar to this in the United States, yet.
Still, most people don’t need a fancy phone to take their temperatures -- any thermometer will do, Degnan said.
“There may be some variation in accuracy of thermometers, but it’s likely that any functioning thermometer would be able to detect a true fever of 100.0 [fahrenheit] or higher,” he said.
Dartmouth College started requiring employees to record their temperatures on May 11, in a similar policy similar to UNH’s. Dartmouth is offering testing temperature on-site for those that do not have access to thermometers. As of now, UNH only offers services for temperature taking within the Health & Wellness building, or McGregor EMS on their Durham campuses.
UNH has not announced a plan in terms of temperature taking for students that are proposed to return to in-person classes in the fall.
These articles are being shared by partners in The Granite State News Collaborative. For more information visit collaborativenh.org.