Detection of imported COVID-19 cases worldwide: early assessment of airport entry screening, 24 January until 17 February 2020

Varvara A Mouchtouri; Zacharoula Bogogiannidou; Martin Dirksen-Fischer; Sotirios Tsiodras; Christos Hadjichristodoulou

doi:10.1186/s41182-020-00260-5

Detection of imported COVID-19 cases worldwide: early assessment of airport entry screening, 24 January until 17 February 2020

Trop Med Health. 2020 Sep 14:48:79. doi: 10.1186/s41182-020-00260-5. eCollection 2020.

Authors

Varvara A Mouchtouri^{1

2}, Zacharoula Bogogiannidou^{1

2}, Martin Dirksen-Fischer^{2

3}, Sotirios Tsiodras⁴, Christos Hadjichristodoulou^{1

2}

Affiliations

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.
³ Hamburg Port Health Center, Hamburg, Germany.
⁴ National and Kapodistrian University of Athens Medical School, Athens, Greece.

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: Airplane; Airports; COVID-19; Entry screening; SARS-CoV-2; Traveler.