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Isolating at home risks spreading COVID-19 to your family

Embargoed until: Publicly released:
Peer-reviewed: This work was reviewed and scrutinised by relevant independent experts.

Meta-analysis: This type of study involves using statistics to combine the data from multiple previous studies to give an overall result. The reliability of a meta-analysis depends on both the quality and similarity of the individual studies being grouped together.

People: This is a study based on research using people.

US scientists say there's a high risk of spreading COVID-19 to others in your household while isolating at home following a diagnosis, especially if you're showing symptoms of the disease. They brought together the data from 54 previous studies, including nearly 78,000 people, and found COVID-19 is more likely than SARS and MERS were to spread within households. They say you're more likely to infect adults than children, with spouses most likely to catch COVID-19 from someone isolating in the home. Wearing masks in the home, improved ventilation, and providing antiviral medications for family members, or isolating patients at external facilities could all help reduce the risk of transmission, they say.

Journal/conference: JAMA Network Open

Link to research (DOI): 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2020.31756

Organisation/s: University of Florida, USA

Funder: The National Institutes of Health.

Media release

From: JAMA

Household Transmission of SARS-CoV-2

What The Study Did: The findings of this study suggest households will continue to be a significant venue for transmission of SARS-CoV-2 because people with suspected or confirmed infections are being told to isolate at home.

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