A department head at National Taiwan University Hospital (NTUH) has advised the Central Epidemic Command Center to apply stricter standards when determining whether people have a fever, amid the spread of the 2019 novel coronavirus that has been declared a global public heath emergency.
The center should update the traditional fever threshold of 38°C used by most health units in the nation to 37.4°C, Department of Environmental and Occupational Medicine director Su Ta-chen (蘇大成) told a news conference in Taipei on Monday.
The disease causes fever in about 99 percent of people who become infected, including 20 percent of patients whose body temperatures range from 37.3°C to 38°C, Su said.
Photo: CNA
According to research published in 2017 in the peer-reviewed weekly medical journal BMJ, a normal body temperature should be about 36.6°C, while another medical paper published in the US earlier this year suggested 36.4°C, he said.
“We used to think that 38°C indicated a fever, because we believed 37°C was a normal body temperature,” Su said.
As such, if one more degree is added to a normal body temperature to determine a fever, then with the new findings 37.4°C indicates a fever, he said, adding that many places in China are now using 37.4°C as a benchmark for quarantine.
“I am not sure why they use 37.4°C to indicate a fever in Wuhan and in many other provinces in China,” Su said. “As we are located so geographically close to China, should we not be aware and adapt a more stringent approach toward what indicates a fever?”
His comments came just one day after Taiwan recorded its first asymptomatic patient confirmed to be infected with the virus.
A fever is a critical symptom of the acute respiratory disease and revising the standards should be seriously considered by the government, said Chan Chang-chuan (詹長權), dean of National Taiwan University’s College of Public Health, which organized the news conference.
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