Photo/Illutration A face mask worn by a COVID-19 patient recuperating at home in Hiroshima on Jan. 18 to prevent a transmission of the virus to his family members in the same house. He also checks his temperature every day with this thermometer to monitor his health. (Provided by the patient)

Ninety-seven percent of people who ran a fever after close contact with COVID-19 patients they live with tested positive for the virus, supporting the health ministry's allowance of a diagnosis of infection without testing.

A public health center in Itako, Ibaraki Prefecture, studied 107 symptomatic close contacts who live with patients whose infections were reported to the center between Jan. 4 and Jan. 22.

Of 75 close contacts who developed a fever, 73, or 97 percent, tested positive, while 22, or 69 percent, of the remaining 32 who had no fever were confirmed infected through testing, according to the preliminary results.

The finding was presented at a Feb. 9 meeting of the ministry’s advisory panel of experts on the pandemic.

The public health center concluded that “deemed positive” diagnoses given to those with fevers are highly accurate since they are more likely to test positive.

The finding provides scientific backing for the health ministry’s current policy of allowing doctors to diagnose symptomatic close contacts who live with patients as deemed to be infected without testing them for the virus.

But the center also pointed to a need to conduct PCR tests on those who had no fever before they undergo drug treatment or are subject to strict restrictions on their movements, given that roughly 30 percent of the suspected patients without a fever tested negative.

At the panel meeting, the ministry also discussed measures to ease the burden on public health centers during the current record spike in cases across the nation. 

The ministry notified local governments the same day that doctors need to only give patients’ names, contact information and vaccination status as well as testing methods used for their diagnoses when reporting new cases to local public health centers.

But it is unclear how much of the workload can be reduced under the new measures since other information on patients, including their infection routes, still need to be entered on those reports after they are submitted.

(This article was written by Kai Ichino and Yuki Edamatsu.)

Related News