The Household Secondary Attack Rate of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2): A Rapid Review. (12th October 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Fung, Hannah F; Martinez, Leonardo; Alarid-Escudero, Fernando; Salomon, Joshua A; Studdert, David M; Andrews, Jason R; Goldhaber-Fiebert, Jeremy D
• Is Part Of: Clinical infectious diseases. Volume 73:Supplement 2(2021)
• Page Start: S138
• Page End: S145
• Publication Date: 2020-10-12
• Subjects: SARS-CoV-2 -- household transmission -- secondary attack -- testing frequency; Communicable diseases -- Periodicals; 616.905
• DOI: 10.1093/cid/ciaa1558
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1058-4838

Abstract

Abstract: Background: Although much of the public health effort to combat coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has focused on disease control strategies in public settings, transmission of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) within households remains an important problem. The nature and determinants of household transmission are poorly understood. Methods: To address this gap, we gathered and analyzed data from 22 published and prepublished studies from 10 countries (20 291 household contacts) that were available through 2 September 2020. Our goal was to combine estimates of the SARS-CoV-2 household secondary attack rate (SAR) and to explore variation in estimates of the household SAR. Results: The overall pooled random-effects estimate of the household SAR was 17.1% (95% confidence interval [CI], 13.7–21.2%). In study-level, random-effects meta-regressions stratified by testing frequency (1 test, 2 tests, >2 tests), SAR estimates were 9.2% (95% CI, 6.7–12.3%), 17.5% (95% CI, 13.9–21.8%), and 21.3% (95% CI, 13.8–31.3%), respectively. Household SARs tended to be higher among older adult contacts and among contacts of symptomatic cases. Conclusions: These findings suggest that SARs reported using a single follow-up test may be underestimated, and that testing household contacts of COVID-19 cases on multiple occasions may increase the yield for identifying secondary cases.