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Temperature checks are becoming the new normal By Evie Fordham FOXBusiness
Paul Pitney, right, Executive Director of the Dickson County Family YMCA, takes the temperature of Eric Thornton as Thornton arrives at the facility to work out Friday, May 1, 2020, in Dickson, Tenn. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey) (Associated Press)
Temperature checks at workplaces and public spaces may become the new normal because of the coronavirus pandemic.
But do they work? A recent study of 5,700 hospitalized coronavirus patients at New York’s Northwell Health found that only one third had fevers when first assessed.
“We should not be checking fever alone,” senior study author Karina Davidson of the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research told FOX Business. “That is not sufficient to know when someone has a COVID-19 infection.”
Although checking for a fever isn’t a 100 percent effective way to determine if an individual has coronavirus, properly conducted checks can help screen infected individuals, Eyal Leshem of the Center for Travel Medicine and Tropical Diseases at Israel’s Sheba Medical Center told FOX Business.
“We know many persons infected with COVID-19 do not have a fever,” Leshem said. “While not expected to identify all persons infected with COVID-19, workplace temperature checks have a potential to improve workers’ safety and reduce transmission of COVID-19 as well as other common viruses such as influenza and norovirus.”
