If someone in your household has COVID-19, there is only a 1 in 10 chance of catching you, the study shows.
- Researchers in Boston have studied more than 7,000 homes with a Covid case
- We found that of all the people living with them, only 10.1% became infected
- The study also found that the risk of catching it at home from someone you live with increases for people with pre-existing health conditions.
One in ten people who catch Covid passes 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.
During this time, 7,262 people caught Covid, but transmitted it only to another 1,809 people living with it, a transmission rate of 10.1%.
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One in ten people who catch Covid passes it on to someone they live with, a study has found. U.S. researchers studied data from more than 7,000 homes in Boston
The newspaper also found that the likelihood of transmitting the virus to someone you live with was lower for larger hosueholds.
For example, someone in a three- to five-person household – one of whom was infected – was 20% less at risk than a two-person household.
However, the data showed that people living with Covid goods were more likely to catch the virus from an infected family member.
People living with Covid goods were more likely to catch the virus from infected family members. The risk of catching the virus increased by 31% if a person had asthma
The risk of catching the virus increased by 31% if a person had asthma, 67% in cancer patients and 35% if a family member was obese.
However, the likelihood of infection has more than doubled in people with liver disease.
“Independent factors significantly associated with an increased risk of transmission included age over 18 years and multiple comorbid conditions,” the researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital wrote in their study, published in the JAMA Open Network.
The findings support other research that has found a similar secondary attack rate of the virus in households.
A review of 54 studies also published in the JAMA Network Open in December 2020 found a household transmission rate of 16.6%.
A new study by Canadian public health officials, published in pre-print on medRxiv, found that for the whole of Ontario between July 1 and November 30, 2020, the rate was only 19.5%.