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

This study analyzed data on airline travelers who arrived at an international airport in Korea in 2012. Among 355,887 (61% of the total arrivals) of arrivals who returned their health declaration forms, 608 cases (0.2%) who reported subjective symptoms such as runny rose and fever were analyzed. Febrile arrivals were defined as individuals with above 37.8°C tympanic temperature. This threshold is frequently used elsewhere [6, 7, 11, 15] . We discovered an annual fever prevalence of 0.002% (6 cases) at an international airport in Korea among passengers from quarantinable countries. The fever prevalence is lower than 0.004% during the influenza pandemic of 2009 in Japan [2] and the 0.08-0.10% of Taiwan for the years 2007-2010 [1] , though they may not be directly comparable to one another because fever prevalence varies by influenza season, region and country of origin among arrivals.