Study: Daily fever numbers in NC drop after increased social distancing
RALEIGH, NC (WNCN) — Data collected by a medical tech company suggest a correlation between North Carolina’s restrictions on restaurants and bars, and the percentage of the company’s users in the state reporting fevers – a main symptom of a coronavirus infection.
Kinsa Inc. manufactures thermometers that connect to the internet via a mobile app and upload its user’s body temperature to a database, allowing the company to compile aggregate data on its users in real-time while keeping their personal information anonymous.
It could indicate that some local social distancing efforts might be having a measurable effect.
According to that data, the percentage of its users in Wake County who are running fevers has been declining ever since March 16 – the day before Gov. Roy Cooper announced the closing of seating areas in restaurants and bars.
On that day, 6.2 percent of users reported high temperatures, compared to a historical average of 4.4 percent.
But since then, reports of fever in the county have been lower than expected since March 21, with the number down to 0.9 percent on Thursday, according to the company’s figures.
“The idea that we can collect this digital data to inform estimates of health, or infectious diseases in this case, it’s an interesting application, and I think that it can be very helpful in identifying potential hot spots where there are outbreaks occurring in communities,” said Allison Aiello, a professor of epidemiology at the University of North Carolina’s Gillings School of Global Public Health.
But there are a few issues with drawing too many broad conclusions from the data, she said.
Other diseases besides COVID-19 cause fevers – the company’s data map originally was created to track seasonal flu – and its base is limited to those who either own the thermometers or manually put their readings into the app.
The company has said its has thermometers in more than 1 million households and records roughly 150,000 temperature readings per day, giving it a large enough sample size to establish some baseline percentages.
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