There is very little known about the prevalence and distribution of respiratory viruses, other than influenza, in international air travellers and whether symptom screening would aid in the prediction of which travellers are more likely to be infected with specific respiratory viruses.
In this study, we investigate whether, the use of a respiratory symptom screening tool at the border would aid in predicting which travellers are more likely to be infected with specific respiratory viruses.
Data were collected from travellers arriving at Christchurch International Airport, New Zealand, during the winter 2008, via a symptom questionnaire, temperature testing, and respiratory sampling.
Respiratory viruses were detected in 342 (26.0%) of 1313 samples obtained from 2714 symptomatic travellers. The most frequently identified viruses were rhinoviruses (128), enteroviruses (77) and influenza B (48). The most frequently reported symptoms were stuffy or runny nose (60%), cough (47%), sore throat (27%) and sneezing (24%). Influenza B infections were associated with the highest number of symptoms (mean of 3.4) followed by rhinoviruses (mean of 2.2) and enteroviruses (mean of 1.9). The positive predictive value (PPV) of any symptom for any respiratory virus infection was low at 26%.
The high prevalence of respiratory virus infections caused by viruses other than influenza in this study, many with overlapping symptotology to influenza, has important implications for any screening strategies for the prediction of influenza in airline travellers.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 3. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 31 December 2017.
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#8,535,472
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#850
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#96,497
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Outputs of similar age from Journal of Clinical Virology
#9
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Altmetric has tracked 25,374,917 research outputs across all sources so far. This one is in the 43rd percentile – i.e., 43% of other outputs scored the same or lower than it.
So far Altmetric has tracked 2,312 research outputs from this source. They typically receive more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 9.1. This one is in the 40th percentile – i.e., 40% of its peers scored the same or lower than it.
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We're also able to compare this research output to 36 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 63% of its contemporaries.
