Temperature in Nursing Home Residents Systematically Tested for SARS-CoV-2.
James L Rudolph, Christopher W Halladay, Malisa Barber and 4 others
PMID 32674815WHAT IT FOUND
Among nursing home residents with confirmed SARS-CoV-2, most did not reach 38.0°C fever.
Repeated rises of 0.5°C from each person's baseline were common, so a fever threshold alone may miss infection.
Key findings
01Residents with confirmed SARS-CoV-2 had a higher maximum temperature than residents without confirmed infection (37.7 vs 37.1°C).
02On the day of testing, 28 residents with confirmed SARS-CoV-2 (6.3%) met the CDC fever criterion of 38.0°C.
03Most residents with confirmed SARS-CoV-2 had a 0.5°C rise from baseline (79.7%), and 62.5% had this rise at least twice.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
The article text reports 453 residents with confirmed infection, while Table 1 lists 443. The analysis did not separate residents who met other symptom screening criteria from those who did not. The sample is mostly male veterans with many comorbidities, so it may not apply to all nursing home residents. Because testing was universal, the study cannot show which residents would have been tested under usual practice. The study is observational, so it cannot prove that a lower temperature threshold causes earlier recognition or better outcomes. Some temperature data were missing and are described only in supplementary material.
Declared interests
The study was supported by NIH and U.S. government non-PHS funding. The funder had no role in the design, data collection, analysis, interpretation, or writing of the study.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that a 0.5°C rise from baseline is a validated screening test for SARS-CoV-2. The study describes temperature patterns in residents who were already tested and does not show that a lower threshold causes earlier recognition or better outcomes.