Positive Screening for Wuhan Novel Coronavirus Infection at International Airport: What's the Final Diagnosis for Positive Cases

Dear Editor,

Active screening at the international airport is an important method in international infectious control. The main aim is for the prevention of imported new emerging infectious diseases. Recently, there was a newly emerging infectious disease, Wuhan novel coronavirus infection, from China that becomes the new global public health concern.[1] The countries with international flight connections with China implemented active screening at the international airport as a tool for infection control. Thailand is a country in Indochina that has 58 international flights connecting with Wuhan, China. Since the first outbreak of the disease in December 2019, the active screening at the airport (by body temperature scanning and clinical history taking) has been done to identify possible infected cases. In the first month, the active screening identified some positive screening cases. Here, the authors retrospectively reappraised on the available data on the final diagnosis of screening positive cases. Of overall 12 cases with positive screening, the final diagnosis by molecular diagnostic tests in referencing laboratories could identify only one case with Wuhan novel coronavirus infection, which is the first case report of infection outside China.[2] The other 11 cases are infected with the influenza virus. There is a high sensitivity (100%) for screening for any infections but low sensitivity for screening for specific disease, Wuhan novel coronavirus infection (false positive rate = 91.67%). It can imply that active screening at the international airport can help screen for febrile illness but it is not specific for screening for a specific emerging infection.

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