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. 2023;6(3):392-400.
doi: 10.26502/jbb.2642-91280101. Epub 2023 Sep 27.

Home Monitoring for Fever: An Inexpensive Screening Method to Prevent Household Spread of COVID-19

Justin Kim  1 , Marcus A Threadcraft  1 , Wei Xue  2 , Sijie Yue  2 , Richard P Wenzel  3 , Frederick S Southwick  1
Affiliations

Home Monitoring for Fever: An Inexpensive Screening Method to Prevent Household Spread of COVID-19

Justin Kim et al. J Biotechnol Biomed. 2023.

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic surge has exceeded testing capacities in many parts of the world. We investigated the effectiveness of home temperature monitoring for early identification of COVID-19 patients.

Study design –: We compared home temperature measurements from a convenience sample of 1180 individuals who reported being test positive for SARS-CoV-2 to an age, sex, and location matched control group of 1249 individuals who had not tested positive.

Methods –: All individuals monitored their temperature at home using an electronic smartphone thermometer that relayed temperature measurements and symptoms to a centralized cloud based, de-identified data bank.

Results -: Individuals varied in the number of times they monitored their temperature. When temperature was monitored for over 72 hours fever (≥ 37.6°C or 99.7°F or a change in temperature of ≥ 1°C or 1.8°F) was detected in 73% of test positive individuals, a sensitivity comparable to rapid SARS-CoV-2 antigen tests. When compared to our control group the specificity of fever for COVID-19 was 0.70. However, when fever was combined with complaints of loss of taste and smell, difficulty breathing, fatigue, chills, diarrhea, or stuffy nose the odds ratio of having COVID-19 was sufficiently high as to obviate the need to employ RTPCR or antigen testing to screen for and isolate coronavirus infected cases.

Conclusions -: Our findings suggest that home temperature monitoring could serve as an inexpensive convenient screen for the onset of COVID-19, encourage earlier isolation of potentially infected individuals, and more effectively reduce the spread of infection in closed spaces.

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Conflict of interest statement

Conflict of interest statements - The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. Duration of temperature monitoring vs. percentage with fever
1081 patients who tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 monitored their oral temperature at home for differing durations. This graph shows the relationship between duration of temperature monitoring and detection of fever. The percentage with fever plateaued between 72 and 96 hours at 73.1%.
Figure 2
Figure 2. Symptoms Associated with COVID-19
The percentage of the total symptoms reported by the Control (total symptoms 1312) and COVID-19+ (total 4537) populations were calculated for each symptom. Controls had an average of 1.68 symptoms and COVID-19+ 2.44 symptoms per person. Sensitivity and specificity were determined for each symptom that achieved a statistically significant higher percentage in COVID-19 patients as compared to controls and included: loss of taste and smell: sensitivity 0.20, specificity 0.95; stuffy nose: sens. 0.23 spec. 0.86; fatigue: sens. 0.25, spec. 0.87; body aches: sens. 0.35, spec. 0.77; cough: sens. 0.39, spec. 0.77; headache: sens. 0.25 spec. 0.80; earache: sen. 0.05 spec. 0.98; chills: sens 0.18, spec 0.85; trouble breathing: sens. 0.05, spec. 0.95 and diarrhea: sens. 0.06, spec. 0.95. ** p < 0.0001 (Earache p = 0.0002) * p < 0.05
Figure 3
Figure 3. Recommended Algorithm for Monitoring Fever, Isolation and Testing in Individuals at Risk for Contracting COVID-19.
(See text for details)
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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