Retrospective Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2020. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Clin Cases. Aug 26, 2020; 8(16): 3465-3473
Published online Aug 26, 2020. doi: 10.12998/wjcc.v8.i16.3465
Home quarantine compliance is low in children with fever during COVID-19 epidemic
Qing Lou, De-Quan Su, Sun-Qin Wang, E Gao, Lian-Qiao Li, Zhi-Qiang Zhuo
Qing Lou, Sun-Qin Wang, E Gao, Lian-Qiao Li, Department of Emergency Medicine, Xiamen Children’s Hospital, Xiamen 361006, Fujian Province, China
De-Quan Su, Zhi-Qiang Zhuo, Department of Infections, Xiamen Children’s Hospital, Xiamen 361006, Fujian Province, China
Author contributions: Lou Q and Zhuo ZQ were responsible for study conception and design and drafted the initial manuscript; Su DQ and Wang SQ reviewed and revised the manuscript; Gao E and Li LQ participated in study conception and design, supervised data collection and analyses, and critically reviewed and revised the manuscript; the authors approved the final manuscript as submitted and agreed to be accountable for all aspects of the work.
Supported by Xiamen Children’ s Hospital Backbone Talent Training Program Project, No. CHP-2019-BT-003.
Institutional review board statement: This study was reviewed and approved by Ethics Review of Scientific Research Ethics Branch of Ethics Committee of Xiamen Children's Hospital.
Informed consent statement: Verbal and written consent was obtained from all parents.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare no conflicts of interest regarding this manuscript.
Data sharing statement: There are no additional data available for this study.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Zhi-Qiang Zhuo, MD, Chief Doctor, Department of Infections, Xiamen Children’s Hospital, No. 92 Yibin Road, Huli District, Xiamen 361006, Fujian Province, China. q661113@sina.cn
Received: April 18, 2020
Peer-review started: April 18, 2020
First decision: June 24, 2020
Revised: June 24, 2020
Accepted: August 1, 2020
Article in press: August 1, 2020
Published online: August 26, 2020
Abstract
BACKGROUND

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak began in China at the end of 2019. The disease is highly infectious. In order to prevent and control the epidemic situation, the state has issued a series of measures to guide the prevention and control of the epidemic. At the same time, it also introduced the measure of home isolation for children with fever. However, due to the nature of children, the implementation of the home isolation turned out to be quite difficult, and questions regarding the home isolation were brought out by parents when seeing doctors. For this reason, we decided to conduct this study.

AIM

To study factors that influence home quarantine compliance in children with fever during the COVID-19 epidemic.

METHODS

A total of 495 paediatric patients with respiratory tract infection and fever were selected from the general fever clinic at Xiamen Children’s Hospital from February 6-27, 2020. On day 8 after the hospital visit, follow-up was conducted by telephone to evaluate the compliance of home quarantine.

RESULTS

Among the ten quarantine measures, the proportion of families adhering to keeping 1.5 m distance, proper hand hygiene, wearing masks at home, and proper cough etiquette was very low (< 30% for each measure). Our analysis showed that compliance was related to gender and age of children, gender and age of primary caregiver, number of children in the family, and intensity of information on quarantine measures. We observed that compliance increased with the age of children. Compared with children whose caregivers were young adults, children with elderly caregivers were 2.461 times more likely to show poor compliance. Furthermore, children who received intensive information on quarantine measures had significantly better compliance.

CONCLUSION

Compliance of children with fever to quarantine measures at home is low during the COVID-19 epidemic. Strengthening education on the quarantine measures is critical to improve compliance, in particular in young children with elderly caregivers.

Keywords: COVID-19, Fever, Children, Home quarantine, Compliance, Influence factor

Core tip: During the current coronavirus disease 2019 epidemic, home isolation of children with fever is of outmost importance. This study aimed to identify factors that influence children’s home quarantine compliance and offer recommendations that will facilitate the home isolation.