NOTE: A surveillance case definition is a set of uniform criteria used to define a disease for public health surveillance. Surveillance case definitions enable public health officials to classify and count cases consistently across reporting jurisdictions. Surveillance case definitions are not intended to be used by healthcare providers for making a clinical diagnosis or determining how to meet an individual patient’s health needs.
A febrile illness of greater than or equal to 5 days' duration, with at least four of the five following physical findings and no other more reasonable explanation for the observed clinical findings:
A case that meets the clinical case definition
If fever disappears after intravenous gamma globulin therapy is started, fever may be of less than 5 days' duration, and the clinical case definition may still be met.