Household secondary attack rate of COVID 19 and its associated housing factors affecting transmission

Abstract

: Overcrowding and household environments are high-risk settings for transmission of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). To calculate the household secondary attack rate among household contacts of confirmed case of COVID-19. 2) To elicit the housing factors affecting the transmission of infection. 3) To know the sociodemographic of the discharge patients.A prospective study was conducted among the COVID 19 laboratory-confirmed discharged patients admitted at District Covid Hospital, Designated Covid health centre from period May 2020 to July 2020. Total 94 patients were able to contact telephonically. Sociodemographic details were taken after informed Verbal consent. Those who are not able to contact telephonically or didn't give consent are excluded. Household secondary attack rate is 14.5%. Mean rooms per person were 2.8 with a standard deviation of 1.38. The mean age of the patients was 39 years with a standard deviation of 14.9. A mild negative correlation between the number of positive COVID-19 cases and rooms per person (r= −0.045, p>0.05) and mild negative correlation was seen with the number of family members and proportion of family members (positive COVID-19 cases in family/total members in the family) being infected by COVID-19 (r= −0.20, p>0.05). Infection control and preventive strategies of household transmission such as good ventilation, isolation precautions of infected person at home, household disinfecting procedures, wearing of mask at home, hand hygiene needs to be encouraged at household level to lower the Secondary attack rate before recommendation of home isolation and home quarantine measures.