If someone in your household has COVID-19, there’s only a 1-in-10 chance of getting it too, find a review
- Researchers in Boston studied more than 7,000 homes with the Covid case
- That found that of those living with them, only 10.1% had the disease
- Research also found risk of being caught at home from someone you live with an increase for people with preexisting health conditions
Just one in ten Covid catches is given to someone they live with, a study has found.
U.S. researchers analyzed data from more than 7,000 households in Boston and found that more than 25,000 people lived there between March 4 and May 17, 2020.
In this timeframe 7,262 people captured Covid but only passed it on to another 1,809 people with whom they lived, a referral rate of 10.1 percent.
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One in ten people who catch Covid give it to someone they live with, a study has found. U.S. researchers analyzed data from more than 7,000 homes in Boston
The paper also found that the virus was more likely to be passed on to someone with whom you live lower for larger hosts.
For example, someone in a household with three to five – one of them infected – was 20 percent less at risk than a household with two.
However, the data showed that people living with Covid products were more likely to catch the virus from an infected family member.

People living with Covid products were more likely to catch the virus from their family member. The risk of catching the virus increased by 31 per cent if a person had asthma
The risk of catching the virus increased 31 percent if a person had asthma, 67 percent for cancer patients and 35 percent if a family member was obese.
However, the incidence of infection is more than double that of people with liver disease.
‘Independent factors were significantly associated with higher risk of transmission including age over 18 years and comorbid multiple conditions,’ the researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital write in their study , published in JAMA Open Network.
The findings support another study that has found a low attack rate of the virus in homes.
A review of 54 studies also published in JAMA Network Open in December 2020 found a home referral rate of 16.6 percent.
A new study from Canadian public health officials published as a preview on medRxiv found that between July 1 and November 30, 2020, Ontario accounted for just 19.5 percent.