A study that’s causing public health officials to grow more concerned about COVID spreading between loved ones is based primarily on families in Nashville. Researchers hope it’ll reveal the most common ways relatives and roommates get each other sick.
The existing research on household transmission of COVID-19, like this study from New York, mostly relies on looking back at contact tracing data, which can have big holes. So Dr. Carlos Grijalva, a Vanderbilt University epidemiologist, decided he would create his own data set.
His research team has now followed nearly 200 households, mostly in Nashville with some also with a research site in Wisconsin. When one person gets sick, they get consent from the patient and members of the household, then begin interviewing them and taking nasal swabs and collecting saliva for 14 days.