A recent discovery has found out that fever may not be a reliable symptom of knowing whether or not a person contracted the coronavirus (COVID-19) since a recent event has shown hospital staff workers testing positive even without having fever.
A nurse walks out of a hospital during the outbreak of coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in the Manhattan borough of New York City, New York, U.S., March 27, 2020.
Amongst 1,353 hospital staff working in Breda and Tilburg who have recently suffered a common winter cough and sniffles were tested to see if they were positive of the COVID-19. The results showed 86 of them, or roughly about 6.4% of them were positive, while only less than half of them had a fever, and the majority of them reportedly working while ill.
The insidious nature of this virus
Marion Koopmans, Jan Kluytmans, along with other colleagues, said in a recent report that the "unexpected high prevalence" has indicated that the virus spreads silently in the community. This recent research has been able to give a key perspective in just how insidious the nature of this pandemic is by affecting health-care workers as well.
These recent events, as pointed out by Koopmans, the acting head of the viroscience department at Rotterdam's Erasmus University Medical Center, shows just "how mild this infection can be" continuing with "And, therefore, how easily it can fly under the radar."
According to Trouw newspaper, The Dutch hospitals will now possibly reach full capacity with its intensive care units starting Sunday due to the pandemic. The government is engaging in talks with Germany regarding the transfer of their critically ill patients to its eastern neighbor.
The rapid increase of victims
According to the Telegraff newspaper, COVID-19 has prompted doctors to ask elderly patients if they would prefer to be cared for at their own homes or should they demand an intensive care unit should they be positive of the virus.
According to Kluymans, co-author of the paper, microbiologist in Breda, and professor of the epidemiology of health-care-associated infections in Utrecht, "We are experiencing a rapid increase of cases in our community, and now in the hospital."
The findings that lead to this deduction
According to the staff who volunteered to undergo testing for the virus among 9,700 employees at both Breda and Tilburg's most prominent hospitals, they did not meet the internationally recommended criteria in order to be defined as infected with the coronavirus.
Excluding travel history to China or even northern history would still result in 40% of the infected health care workers being identified in the screening that wouldn't have otherwise been detected.
Dutch researchers have finally concluded that fever is a possible symptom but is not necessarily a required symptom for an individual to be contaminated with the coronavirus (COVID-19). Another suggested symptom added by the researches would be severe muscle aches as well as general tiredness. An additional study was done to assess just how many of the health care workers generated antibodies against the virus, according to Koopmans, who is also a member of the World Health Organization (WHO).
