Inferring risks of coronavirus transmission from community household data. (September 2022)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: House, Thomas; Riley, Heather; Pellis, Lorenzo; Pouwels, Koen B; Bacon, Sebastian; Eidukas, Arturas; Jahanshahi, Kaveh; Eggo, Rosalind M; Sarah Walker, A.
• Other Names: De Angelis Daniela guest-editor.; Birrell Paul guest-editor.; Funk Sebastian guest-editor.; House Thomas guest-editor.
• Is Part Of: Statistical methods in medical research. Volume 31:Number 9(2022)
• Page Start: 1738
• Page End: 1756
• Publication Date: 2022-09
• Subjects: Epidemic -- COVID-19 -- model -- infection -- risk factors; Medicine -- Research -- Statistical methods -- Periodicals; Research -- Periodicals; Review Literature -- Periodicals; Statistics -- methods -- Periodicals; Médecine -- Recherche -- Méthodes statistiques -- Périodiques; 610.727
• DOI: 10.1177/09622802211055853
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0962-2802

Abstract

The response of many governments to the COVID-19 pandemic has involved measures to control within- and between-household transmission, providing motivation to improve understanding of the absolute and relative risks in these contexts. Here, we perform exploratory, residual-based, and transmission-dynamic household analysis of the Office for National Statistics COVID-19 Infection Survey data from 26 April 2020 to 15 July 2021 in England. This provides evidence for: (i) temporally varying rates of introduction of infection into households broadly following the trajectory of the overall epidemic and vaccination programme; (ii) susceptible-Infectious transmission probabilities of within-household transmission in the 15–35% range; (iii) the emergence of the Alpha and Delta variants, with the former being around 50% more infectious than wildtype and 35% less infectious than Delta within households; (iv) significantly (in the range of 25–300%) more risk of bringing infection into the household for workers in patient-facing roles pre-vaccine; (v) increased risk for secondary school-age children of bringing the infection into the household when schools are open; (vi) increased risk for primary school-age children of bringing the infection into the household when schools were open since the emergence of new variants.