Home safe home let’s do a better job of controlling infections among family members

Home safe home let’s do a better job of controlling infections among family members

The better we understand how and where the SARS-CoV-2 transmission takes place the more effectively we can make targeted interventions to reduce its spread. In this context the meta analysis of various studies by the Imperial College London Covid-19 Response Team and its multiple partners has found that households show the highest transmission rates of all indoor settings. While uncomfortable, this is no surprise as it has earlier been flagged by data from countries like China, India and the UK. Comfort can however be found in that the chance of an asymptomatic person infecting a close contact is estimated at 3.5% as compared to 12.8% chance for a symptomatic person.

Actually the household was identified as a major site of infection very early on in the Covid outbreak. This is why Wuhan authorities ramped up institutional quarantine in mission mode, separating both confirmed and suspected cases from their families with dispatch. But for both cultural and material reasons, rather than take this totalitarian road most countries have embraced home quarantine as a sensible tool in the anti-pandemic arsenal. A good indicator of the effectiveness of the home quarantine protocols that have been devised is that the above study estimates the chance of passing on infection in households to be 21.1%, as compared to upto 85% of infections in Guangdong and Sichuan being reported from households in February.

In India self-isolation in homes with the requisite facilities will remain in big play in the foreseeable future. But better compliance with established protocols can make it much more effective. Governments’ role in this is to strengthen monitoring and also improve access to testing at home. Citizens for their part must follow guidelines, instead of indulging in rebellions that will hurt their family the most.