NEW YORK (WCBS 880) — With temperature screenings becoming the go-to method for finding potential COVID-19 cases in public spaces, a new Northwell Health study finds that it might not be as effective as initally thought.
Of the 5,700 hospitalized COVID-19 patients studied by Northwell Health, only 30-35 percent of them had a fever.
"That goes against the common wisdom that fever is very common in COVID positive patients. It doesn't mean that screening people for temperature is a bad idea," said Dr. Thomas McGinn, deputy physician in chief at Northwell Health. "If you can do a fever screening and it's not that expensive for you to do, it's probably okay to be doing it, but if you can't do it it doesn't mean you shouldn't be doing any screening at all."
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McGinn says temperature screenings should not be ruled out, but would be more effective if they were paried with a quick symptom survey. He suggests in addition, asking about any flu-like symptoms would make a quick process more thorough.
"Right now that's probably the best we're going to do without creating a logjam," McGinn said adding that having a lengthier screening process in a public space could cause unwanted crowding. "This is not going to be a major solution. What's going to be the major solution is case identification, contact tracing as we move into the fall, so that we reduce any outbreaks that occur."
Contact tracing programs still have not begun in New York.