Access Control Tech Update: Identifying Exposure Through Contact Tracing

In addition to everything else we are experiencing to adapt to our new normal, there are many new terms/words as well as products being introduced to assist with dealing with the affects/aftermath of COVID-19. One example is Contact Tracing.

Contact Tracing

Contact Tracing is the process of identifying people who may have come into contact with an infected person, and subsequent collection of further information about these contacts. Kenton Brothers offers security access control systems that have this capability built in. Gallagher is one of our card access control providers. They’ve designed a very specific tool to assist their users in identifying cardholders who have shared an area simultaneously with a cardholder that has tested positive for an infectious virus, such as COVID-19.

If an individual was deemed a health risk (i.e. has tested positive or is suspected of having COVID-19) and had entered your site, using this report you can identify other cardholders who might have an elevated risk of infection. This information can be used to proactively identify those cardholders who need notification about their exposure.

The report can also identify those cardholders who did not come in contact with the infected cardholder, therefore ruling out exposure concerns.

The report does not only identify cardholders who have shared a zone with an infected individual; it also allows operators to understand the full extent of the exposure by providing the following details for each contacted cardholder:

• The origin cardholder (the infected cardholder)
• The access zone (the area contact was made between the origin cardholder and the other cardholder)
• The generation layer of contact (the level of contact from person-to-person)
• The amount of time of exposure (how long the potential cardholders were exposed)

The proximity and contact tracing function generates reports that highlight the history of contact between a specified Cardholder and all other Cardholders (i.e. which Cardholders were in the same Zones as the specified one) within specified dates. Reports are output as CSV files (viewable in Microsoft Excel or similar).