How can I tell if my fever is contagious?

Introduction

By definition, a fever is an increase in body temperature above 38°C. It can be caused both by an infection and by a central regulatory disorder. However, bacterial or viral infections are usually the main cause of fever. Fever in itself is not contagious, but the pathogen that causes the fever can be transmitted to other people.

How can I tell if my fever is contagious?

Each disease can have different symptoms, with fever being only one of many possible. It develops when the body’s own cells of the immune system are activated and trigger an inflammatory reaction. Or to put it another way, fever is nothing more than a reaction of the immune system to kill pathogens.

The increase in temperature therefore means above all that the defense process is in full swing and the infection has not yet been sufficiently contained by the body’s own cells. It can only be determined by measuring the body temperature – no matter whether it is under the tongue or rectally. Those affected can also judge how ill they feel by the severity of other existing symptoms.

In principle, the more symptoms of an illness coincide with the fever, the higher the risk of infection. However, even temperatures that fall during the recovery process should be seen as critical with regard to the ability to work, since even a slightly elevated body temperature still represents an infection that has not completely healed. In order not to infect his colleagues unnecessarily, the affected person should only return to work fever-free.

Conversely, this also applies to a slightly elevated body temperature at the beginning of an infection. This period of time until the correct onset of the disease is perhaps even the most dangerous for an infection. During this time, the pathogens that have penetrated the body multiply and attack the mucous membranes of the affected person, for example.

Until the immune system identifies the pathogens as pathogenic and mobilizes and regenerates cells of the body’s own defense system, the affected person only suffers from subfebrile (= just below the fever limit of 38°C) temperatures. The affected person may therefore feel somewhat reduced in performance, but not yet really ill. For the pathogens, this means optimal conditions for spreading, since contact with other people is usually not yet avoided. The slight feeling of “glowing” or the “inner heat” should therefore be taken just as seriously as real fever in terms of contagiousness.