Fever clinics are designed to provide prompt assessment, management, laboratory examination and decision-making for the potential infected cases, which serves as the crucial first-line of defense to control nosocomial infection. Guided by the primary principle of ‘early assessment, early detection, and early isolation’, fever clinics played a significant role in triaging suspected cases and minimize the risk of nosocomial infection during the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) combat in China. However, fever clinics failed to function normally as expected, with an astonishing number of healthcare workers infected. In this comment, we systematically evaluated the current limitations of fever clinics and recommended several countermeasures, aiming to enhance and maximize the capability and capacity of fever clinics for acute infectious diseases.