Fever Screening and Detection of Febrile Arrivals at an International Airport in Korea: Association among Self-reported Fever, Infrared Thermal Camera Scanning, and Tympanic Temperature

Cho, Kyung Sook; Yoon, Jangho

An important limitation of this study is noteworthy. In this study, we were not able to perform multivariate analysis because of the so-called small cell problem (i.e., only six cases of febrile arrivals). Nonetheless, this research, for the first time in Korea analyzed the fever prevalence and the effectiveness of mass thermal camera scanning to detect fever at an international airport in Korea. Age and outdoor temperature could lead to differential tympanic and thermal camera temperature [16, 17] . Future research can add to the literature by teasing out the influence of the factors on the detection of febrile arrivals. Our data do not include arrivals who might have been asymp- tomatic but detected as having a fever by the thermal camera scanning. Also, we were not able to identify those who self-reported a fever but were not detected as a fever case by the thermal camera scanning. Future research can benefit from having a stronger research design that includes these missed cases in analyses. The limitation also warrants future efforts to measure sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value and negative predictive value of the thermal camera, self-reported fever or entry screening system.