If someone in your household has COVID-19, there is only a 1 in 10 chance that you will catch it too, the study finds
- Researchers in Boston have studied more than 7,000 homes with a Covid case
- Found that only 10.1% of all the people who lived with them became infected
- Study also found that the risk of catching it at home with someone you live with increases for people with pre-existing health conditions
Only one in ten people who catch Covid pass it on to someone they live with, a study has found.
U.S. researchers analyzed data from more than 7,000 homes in Boston and found that more than 25,000 people lived there between March 4 and May 17, 2020.
In this time frame, 7262 people caught Covid, but they only passed it on to a further 1809 people with whom they lived, a transmission rate of 10.1 percent.
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One in ten people who catch Covid pass it on to someone they live with, a study has found. U.S. researchers study data from more than 7,000 homes in Boston
The newspaper also found that the likelihood of the virus being transmitted to someone you live with is lower for larger households.
For example, someone in a home with three to five people – one of whom was infected – did 20 percent less than a home for two people.
However, the data showed that people living with Covid products are more likely to catch the virus from an infected family member.
People living with Covid products are more likely to catch the virus from their infected family member. The risk of catching the virus increases by 31 percent if someone has asthma
The risk of catching the virus increased by 31 percent if someone had asthma, 67 percent for cancer patients and 35 percent if a family member was obese.
However, the likelihood of infection has more than doubled for people with liver disease.
“Independent factors significantly associated with a higher transmission risk include age more than 18 years and multiple disease states,” write researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital in their study, published in JAMA Open Network.
The findings support other research that has found a similarly low secondary attack rate of the virus in households.
A review of 54 studies also published in JAMA Network Open in December 2020 found that the household transfer rate was 16.6 percent.
In a new study by Canadian public health officials, published as a co-op on medRxiv, it was found that the rate between July 1 and November 30, 2020 for the whole of Ontario was only 19.5 percent.