Study Finds People Are More Likely to Get COVID-19 at Home

SEOUL (Reuters) – South Korean epidemiologists have found that people were more likely to contract the new coronavirus from members of their own homes than from contacts outside the home.

A study published in the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on July 16 examined in detail 5,706 “index patients” who had tested positive for the coronavirus and more than 59,000 people who entered contact them.

The findings showed that only two out of every 100 infected people had contracted the virus from non-domestic contacts, while one in 10 had contracted the disease from their own families.

By age group, the infection rate within the home was higher when the first confirmed cases were adolescents or people in their 60s and 70s.

“This is probably because these age groups are more likely to be in close contact with family members, as the group needs more protection or support,” said Jeong Eun-kyeong, director of the Centers for Control and the Korea Disease Prevention (KCDC) and one of the study’s authors, said in a briefing.

Children age nine and younger were less likely to be the index patient, said Dr. Choe Young-june, an assistant professor at Hallym University School of Medicine who co-directed the work, though he noted that the sample size 29 was small compared to 1,695 from 20 to 29 years studied.

Children with COVID-19 were also more likely to be asymptomatic than adults, making it difficult to identify index cases within that group.

“The difference in the age group is not of great importance when it comes to hiring COVID-19. Children may be less likely to transmit the virus, but our data is not sufficient to confirm this hypothesis, “Choe said.

Data for the study was collected between January 20 and March 27, when the new coronavirus was spreading exponentially and daily infections in South Korea peaked.

KCDC has reported 45 new infections as of Monday, bringing the country’s total cases to 13,816 with 296 deaths.