ABSTRACT
Background: Household overcrowding is associated with increased risk of infectious diseases across contexts and countries. Limited data exist linking household overcrowding and risk of COVID-19. We used data collected from the Virus Watch cohort to examine the association between overcrowded households and SARS-CoV-2.
ABSTRACT
Introduction: Increased transmissibility of B.1.1.7 variant of concern (VOC) in the UK may explain its rapid emergence and global spread. We analysed data from putative household infector - infectee pairs in the Virus Watch Community cohort study to assess the serial interval of COVID-19 and whether this was affected by emergence of the B.1.1.7 variant.
ABSTRACT
Background: Hand hygiene may mitigate the spread of COVID-19 in community settings;however, empirical evidence is limited. Given reports of similar transmission mechanisms for COVID-19 and seasonal coronaviruses, we investigated whether hand hygiene impacted the risk of acquiring seasonal coronavirus infections. Methods: Data were drawn from three successive winter cohorts (2006-2009) of the England-wide Flu Watch study. Participants (n =1633) provided baseline estimates of hand hygiene behaviour. Coronavirus infections were identified from nasal swabs using RT-PCR. Poisson mixed models estimated the effect of hand hygiene on personal risk of coronavirus illness, both unadjusted and adjusted for confounding by age and healthcare worker status. Results: Moderate-frequency handwashing (6-10 times per day) incidence rate ratio (aIRR) =0.64, p=0.04). There was no evidence for a dose-response effect of handwashing, with results for higher levels of hand hygiene (>10 times per day) not significant (aIRR =0.83, Conclusions: This is the first empirical evidence that regular handwashing can reduce personal risk of acquiring seasonal support clear public health context of the current COVID-19 pandemic © 2020. Beale S et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited
ABSTRACT
Background: Hand hygiene may mitigate the spread of COVID-19 in community settings;however, empirical evidence is limited. Given reports of similar transmission mechanisms for COVID-19 and seasonal coronaviruses, we investigated whether hand hygiene impacted the risk of acquiring seasonal coronavirus infections.