(Yicai Global) Feb. 13 -- Chinese tech company Baidu said today that it has developed the first free open-source facial scanning model that uses artificial intelligence to identify people who are not wearing protective masks despite the outbreak of fatal novel coronavirus in the country, The Paper reported.

As businesses get back to work after the extended Chinese New Year holiday, a set of new problems has appeared due to the virus epidemic, Beijing-based Baidu said.

How can employers check if staff are wearing masks at work? How can authorities identify masked faces and check people's temperatures at busy transport hubs? And how can daily face check-ins be carried out when masks are worn? These are issues that need solving, Baidu said.

Most regions of China now require people to wear masks in public places because of the Covid-19 epidemic.

Developers only need to use a small amount of their data to quickly develop models for their own use based on Baidu's model, which has an accuracy rate of 96.5 percent in detecting whether a person is wearing a mask.

Editor: Peter Thomas