Case Study of a Returning Tourist Group with Members Collectively Having Fever Upon Arrival at Chiang Kai-shek International Airport

Pei-Ci Yu

2006 Vol.22 NO.3

Correspondence Author:

Abstract:

Around eight thirty on the evening of February 6, 2006, staff at a fever-screening station located at Chiang Kai-shek (CKS) International Airport for in-coming travelers detected five members of one tourist group having fever. The group was on its return trip from Bali, Indonesia having boarded China Airline Flight CI688. Their stay in Indonesia from was from February 2 till 6, and the group consisted of 35 members. Since the incident revealed more than one person from the same travel group having fever, it constituted the necessary epidemiological circumstances in terms of people, timing, and location for a possibility of potential cluster infection that calls for immediate investigation. The purposes of such an investigation include: to find out how many members of the traveling group in total were having similar symptoms, what are the common symptoms other than elevated temperature, what was the probable route of transmission, what was the pathogenic cause of the fever, and, most importantly, whether there was anyone infected with the much feared “human avian influenza.”