Living with someone who has symptomatic COVID puts you and every other person in your household in danger of catching the disease--even if you’ve been vaccinated.
Avoiding exposure to COVID isn’t easy if you live with someone who has the virus. Although steps can be taken to prevent transmission, all kinds of circumstances can interfere with recommended precautionary measures. For instance, the size, layout, and number of people living in your home may make isolation of the patient impossible. Also, some individuals who have the disease—such as children or people who need help to eat or get around--may require close contact with whoever is taking care of them.
Vaccination does cut the risk of COVID causing severe illness, hospitalization, or death--which is a tremendous relief. Still, we now know that vaccine effectiveness wanes over time, and that the vaccine cannot fight all variants. These factors are particularly troubling when it comes to household transmission. A 2022 study conducted by the CDC found that the highly contagious Omicron variant, which along with its subvariants is dominant across the globe, spread in 50% of the households in which a COVID+ individual lived.
Your participation in clinical studies could help us fill that need. If you live with someone who’s COVID+, are at least 12 years old, and don’t have COVID yourself, join us to help advance medicine in the US and worldwide. Please note that the COVID-positive member of the household must have tested positive for the virus within the past 72 hours, and must have at least 1 COVID symptom, such as fever, shortness of breath, cough, etc.
