Detection of imported COVID-19 cases worldwide: early assessment of airport entry screening, 24 January until 17 Februar
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(2020) 48:79
Tropical Medicine and Health
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Open Access
Detection of imported COVID-19 cases worldwide: early assessment of airport entry screening, 24 January until 17 February 2020 Varvara A. Mouchtouri1,2, Zacharoula Bogogiannidou1,2, Martin Dirksen-Fischer2,3, Sotirios Tsiodras4 and Christos Hadjichristodoulou1,2*
Abstract The purpose of this study was to provide an overview of entry screening measures applied at airports in response to the COVID-19 epidemic worldwide. Between 24 January and 17 February 2020, 5.2% (95% CI 3.1–8.5) of the 271 total imported COVID-19 cases worldwide (excluding imported cases arriving in China, Macao, and Hong Kong) with known detection location were captured through airport entry screening. The majority of imported COVID-19 cases (210) were identified by the health care system (77.5%). Efforts should focus on health care system preparedness for early case detection, since according to our and previous studies health care facilities are the actual point of entry of imported cases. Keywords: COVID-19, Entry screening, Airports, Airplane, Traveler, SARS-CoV-2
Introduction Airport entry screening measures were implemented in various countries worldwide in response to severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), influenza pandemic (H1N1), and Ebola virus disease in West Africa, and detected no cases or a low number of cases [1]. However, several important secondary positive effects of entry screening have been reported including discouraging travel of ill persons, raising awareness, educating the traveling public, and maintaining operation of flights from/to the affected areas [1].
In response to the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) public health emergency of international concern, exit screening was implemented in affected areas, while many countries worldwide implemented entry screening at international airports in an attempt to identify imported cases. Entry screening aims at assessing the presence of symptoms and/or the exposure to COVID-19 of travelers arriving from affected areas, and travelers that have been identified as exposed to or infected with COVID-19 should be quarantined or isolated and treated [1].
* Correspondence: [email protected]; [email protected] 1 Laboratory of Hygiene and Epidemiology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Thessaly, 22, Papakyriazi street, Larisa, Greece 2 EU Healthy Gateways Joint Action, Larissa, Greece Full list of author information is available at the end of the article © The Author(s). 2020 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the m
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