The effectiveness of visual triaging and testing of suspected COVID-19 cases in primary care setting in Saudi Arabia

Asymptomatic individuals could be a source of spreading the infection, especially in their households. Triaging and testing an individual for coronavirus disease (COVID-19) infection rely on the criteria included in the adopted triaging instrument, and adopted case definition of a suspected case. They both may need to be reviewed and modified to make them more effective in making the right decision.

A cross-sectional study was used to find out the effectiveness of triaging instrument and the case definition used in the fever clinic (FC) in one of our primary care centers. The data of 630 randomly selected participants who were tested in our center between April 12 and August 12 2020 were analyzed.

About 36.8% of the 630 tested participants were positive for COVID-19. Symptomatic patients were 3.93 (95% CI; 2.58, 5.98; P < 0.001) times more likely to test positive than asymptomatic ones. The participants with a history of contact with a COVID-19 confirmed case were 1.47 (95% CI; 1.03, 2.10; P = 0.032) times more likely to test positive compared to those without such history. Symptomatic with and without history of contact were 8.40 (95% CI; 3.23, 21.86; P < 0.001) and 4.91 (95% CI; 1.84, 13.09; P < 0.001) times more likely to test positive compared to asymptomatic contact, respectively. Moreover, patients with comorbidity were also 1.85 (95% CI; 1.31, 2.60; P < 0.001) times more likely to test positive than healthy ones. The mean of the number of the households, and the mean of the number of households tested positive significantly exceeded the means of those tested negative by 1.03 (95% CI; 0.48, 1.57; P < 0.001), and 0.98 (95% CI; 0.68, 1.28; P < 0.001), respectively. From the studied triaging items only symptoms, comorbidities, and the number of households tested positive were independently associated with testing positive. Moreover, from studied symptoms, only fever, cough, myalgia, and loss of taste and smell were independently associated with testing positive. Finally, from the studied comorbidities, only diabetes mellitus was independently associated with testing positive.

At the time of outbreak and pandemic, people get worried and need to be reassured, and contacts would then seek testing. However, resources including manpower, material, and money need to be protected and used wisely. Thus, the adoption of an evidence-based updated testing policy is crucially needed. Furthermore, early identification of the potential sources of the infection is also crucially needed to control the spreading of the infection.