BIO

I am a junior at FSU studying Behavioral Neuroscience on the pre-med track. My current research interests include identifying early signs of Autism Spectrum Disorder with the Autism Institute at FSU College of Medicine.

Correlation Between High Body Temperature and COVID-19 Cases

Abstract

Technology such as distance thermometers has played an essential role in disease prevention and identification in recent years, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic when the public embraced its use as a biosecurity measure (“Thermal Detection for Covid-19 Screening”, 2021). An important effect in determining the usefulness of distance thermometers is to measure their ability to identify patients with a fever in order to prevent further spreading of the disease. In this study, we focused on the correlation between the rise of Covid-19 cases in West Palm Beach and patients with high body temperature at the moment of entering a non-urgent medical practice. The expected result would be that more cases of Covid-19 would result in more patients with high temperatures entering the practice. This would support that using distance thermometers is a reliable effort. This study examines a subsample of individuals from a medical practice in South Florida overseeing more than 10,000 patients and we focused on those 18 years or older. The data analyzed in this study was collected using distance forehead thermometers as advised by local protocols (Mohammed et al., 2020). Results include a negative correlation between high body temperatures and daily positive cases of Covid-19, as well as a positive correlation between high body temperature and weather temperature. Future research should include a larger sample pool for greater accuracy, as well as more investigation into how weather affects body temperature.

Keywords: COVID-19, temperature, efficiency, fever