Man walks his dog past graffiti on a road amid the spread of COVID-1 in New Delhi
Seoul:
South Korean epidemiologists have found that people are more likely to contract the novel coronavirus from members of their own households 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 came into contact. with them.
The results showed that only two in 100 infected people got the virus from non-family contacts, while one in 10 got the disease from their own family.
By age group, the household infection rate was higher when the first confirmed cases were adolescents or people aged 60 to 70.
“This is probably because these age groups are more likely to be in close contact with family members as the group is in greater need of protection or support,” Jeong Eun-kyeong, director of Korea Centers for Child Care. Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) and one of the study’s authors, gave a briefing.
Children aged nine and under were the least likely to be the index patient, said Dr Choe Young-June, an assistant professor at Hallym University College of Medicine who co-led the work, although he noted that the The sample size of 29 was small compared to the 1,695 young people aged 20 to 29 studied.
Children with COVID-19 were also more likely to be asymptomatic than adults, making it more difficult to identify index cases in this group.
“The difference in age group does not matter much when it comes to contracting COVID-19. Children may be less likely to transmit the virus, but our data is not sufficient to confirm this hypothesis. “Choe said.
Study data was collected between January 20 and March 27, when the new coronavirus was spreading exponentially and daily infections in South Korea peaked.
The KCDC reported 45 new infections on Monday, bringing the total number of cases in the country to 13,816 with 296 deaths.
(Reporting by Sangmi Cha; Editing by Catherine Evans)
(This story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
