Quandelacy, Talia M and Hitchings, Matt D T and Lessler, Justin and Read, Jonathan M and Vukotich, Charles and Azman, Andrew S and Salje, Henrik and Zimmer, Shanta and Gao, Hongjiang and Zheteyeva, Yenlik and Uzicanin, Amra and Cummings, Derek A T (2023) Household transmission dynamics of seasonal human coronaviruses. The Journal of infectious diseases, 227 (9). pp. 1104-1112. ISSN 0022-1899
Full text not available from this repository.Abstract
Background Household transmission studies inform how viruses spread among close contacts, but few characterize household transmission of endemic coronaviruses. Methods We used data collected from 223 households with school-age children participating in weekly disease surveillance over 2 respiratory virus seasons (December 2015 to May 2017), to describe clinical characteristics of endemic human coronaviruses (HCoV-229E, HcoV-HKU1, HcoV-NL63, HcoV-OC43) infections, and community and household transmission probabilities using a chain-binomial model correcting for missing data from untested households. Results Among 947 participants in 223 households, we observed 121 infections during the study, most commonly subtype HCoV-OC43. Higher proportions of infected children (<19 years) displayed influenza-like illness symptoms than infected adults (relative risk, 3.0; 95% credible interval [CrI], 1.5–6.9). The estimated weekly household transmission probability was 9% (95% CrI, 6–13) and weekly community acquisition probability was 7% (95% CrI, 5–10). We found no evidence for differences in community or household transmission probabilities by age or symptom status. Simulations suggest that our study was underpowered to detect such differences. Conclusions Our study highlights the need for large household studies to inform household transmission, the challenges in estimating household transmission probabilities from asymptomatic individuals, and implications for controlling endemic CoVs.