The scientific data available to us suggests that the coronavirus is more likely to spread through close contact with a person who has COVID-19 rather than through airborne transmission. Companies, factories, malls, and other public spaces face an ongoing challenge to provide a safe environment on their premises to prevent the spread of this deadly virus without disrupting productivity and business continuity.

While social distancing is crucial to contain the virus’ spread in communities, it is equally vital to keep workplaces and shared facilities safe. If establishments fail to do this effectively, their entire premises may need to be sealed, leading to a loss in productivity and jobs, and demoralizing employees greatly.

Keeping this in view, it is imperative to use technology to monitor compliance to social distancing norms by employees, have screening guidelines for vital parameters, and ensure early isolation, both at an individual or a facility level. Maintaining physical registers to do this will not be as effective. It will also take several days to create a list of employees who are possible carriers of the virus.

Wipro’s solution ensures social distancing and contact tracing of workers, office staff, visitors, and customers. The solution segregates information at a country, state, and individual level in the form of notifications and reports that are shared with all stakeholders. It also provides 15-minute cumulative social distancing breach information and messages.

Employees are required to wear a small clip on device that easily fits onto their belt, coat, or lanyard. The device notifies them when they are less than two meters away from another employee by buzzing and flashing. Recently, the ‘Greater Toronto Airports Authority’ which operates Canada's largest airport – the Toronto Pearson International Airport - implemented Wipro’s solution for its 1000+ workforce.

Hosted on AWS, the solution includes the following features: site/branch wise segregation of data, 15 minute cumulative alerts, real time social distancing breach alert, mute functionality in devices to prevent a sign for 30 minutes, device mapping/un-mapping to an employee,  last device synced date along with filtering of dates.

The benefits of the Wipro solution include prevention of the spread of COVID-19 by effective social distancing and easy contact tracing. The tool identifies only those employees who have come into contact with a COVID positive person. Thus, only suspect employees need to get tested, preventing an entire facility from being sealed. Needless to say, it keeps business and productivity levels up at all times.