The coronavirus has infected 14,906,602 people and killed 615,754 according to Johns Hopkins University. South Korean epidemiologists have conducted a study showing that people are more at risk of COVID-19 infection from members of their own homes than from external contact. The study was published by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on July 16.
South Korean researchers looked at 5,706 infected “index patients” as well as more than 59,000 people who had come into contact with them.
They analyzed the infection rate from the “index” group to the contact group, and tracked how the virus spread among them.
The shock findings showed that only two out of 100 people caught COVID-19 from external contacts.
But one in 10 horrible people contracted the virus from their own home.
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The study also revealed that infection within the home was higher when adolescents or people in their 60s and 70s were the first infected age group.
Jeong Eun-kyeong, director of the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and one of the study’s authors, said in a briefing that this could be because those age groups are “more likely to be in contact close “with families.
These groups were also more likely to depend on other household members, and therefore would interact more, according to Mr. Eun-kyeong.
Dr. Choe Young-june, an assistant professor at Hallym University School of Medicine who led the work, added that children under the age of nine were less likely to spread the virus if they were infected.
But the study only used 29 nine-year-olds in the sample size, meaning the findings may not be accurate.
Previous studies have suggested that the coronavirus spreads worse indoors due to the concentrated “viral load”.
The British Medical Journal published a study in May recommending better ventilation and planning to “isolate an infected household member as much as possible” to prevent the spread of the coronavirus in the home.
The study added, “The precautionary principle suggests that caregivers of unwell household members should be encouraged to take steps to reduce the infectious viral load to reduce the incidence and severity of infection. “
The South Korean study used data collected between January 20 and March 27.
COVID-19 peaked in the country at this time, with the highest daily infections for South Korea in this period.
