Health
People more likely to contract COVID at home, study finds
Srinagar: In a recent study, South Korean epidemiologists have found that people were more likely to contract the new coronavirus from members of their own households than from contacts outside the home.
A study published in the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on July 16 looked in detail at 5,706 “index patients” who had tested positive for the coronavirus and more than 59,000 people who came into contact with them, a report by an international news agency Reuters said.
The findings showed just two out of 100 infected people had caught the virus from non-household contacts, while one in 10 had contracted the disease from their own families.
By age group, the infection rate within the household was higher when the first confirmed cases were teenagers or people in their 60s and 70s, the report added.
“This is probably because these age groups are more likely to be in close contact with family members as the group is in more need of protection or support,” the report quoted Jeong Eun-kyeong, director of the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC), saying in a briefing. Jeong Eun-kyeong is one of the authors of the study
The study also revealed that children with COVID were also more likely to be asymptomatic than adults, which made it harder to identify index cases within that group.
Pertinently, as the COVID outbreak continues to grapple countries across the world, US president has warned that the “nasty horrible’” virus will get worse in the US before it gets better.
According to the data published by John Hopkins, 14,845,978 people have been confirmed of COVID globally. 615,364 people have succumbed to the virus with the US recording the maximum number of deaths.
On Tuesday, the country reported more than 1,000 new fatalities, in the first time since June 10. More than 140,000 Americans have lost their lives in just five months in the US due to COVID.
Free Press Kashmir is now on Telegram. Click here to Join.
