Covid and families

[AvieSo]

Can I ask if you experienced covid in your family - what was the experience like in your family?

Did everyone in the family contract the virus or was it just some members of the family? If it was limited to one a member or two of the family and others didn't contract the virus - how are the hygiene measures? Was the hygiene measures stringent?

The reason I ask is my family believe if the virus gets into the household it will travel around to all. I believe it doesn't have to go to everyone in the house if everyone makes an effort with the appropriate hygiene measures of coughing and sneezing into elbow, appropriate hand hygiene, isolation in a room if feeling unwell.

We all got it.

Though youngest two DCs weren't tested, but pretty sure they had it too (exact same symptoms as eldest DD we had tested).

My parents, however, had been looking after DC as part of our childcare bubble and had had regular contact up until the point I developed symptoms (I got them first) and they didn't catch it.

We didn't have any hygiene measures other than what we normally have. No way for any of us to isolate DCs are 2, 5 and 7 so no chance of reducing physical contact either.

I can't speak from personal experience, but the data so far is clear. The vast majority of infections occur within the home, yet there are numerous examples were some members of a household contract the virus and others don't.

So yes, it's a major risk if one person is infected, but it's not set in stone. Lots of epidemiologists now believe that the main vector for spread is airborne though so bear this in mind when it comes to precautions. Things like sitting around a table talking in an unventilated room - big risk. Ideally an infected person should stay in one room, and nobody else should enter that room without it being well ventilated first (window open).

DH symptomatic and tested positive. I didn't get it despite no social distancing from him (tested negative).

Out of 7 people only one didn't have a positive test but we might have missed it as they were asymptotic, everyone else tested positive

I'm in the eu and the vaccination programme is so slow. The healthcare workers were vaccinated and care homes were recently done. People in the communities are very slow. They are only touching on the over 80s now. The over 70s are jot done.

I am having a difficult time with my mother. She is 68. She's putting herself at risk more and more of contracting the virus now because she is fed up and bored with lockdown. Just, she is appauling at following the basic hygiene measures of coughing and sneezing into the elbow. She thinks nothing of coughing openingly. I'm OK. I am vaccinated now. She's carelessly putting herself and my brother at risk of the virus and after all we have done to keep the virus out from the family home. She's only a matter of weeks away from a vaccine that she doesn't want to wait for any more and now she thinks the lockdown doesn't apply to her anymore.

When me and dd2 had it, dd1 didn’t get it (it’s just the three of us). She does spend most of her life in her bedroom! But we live in a small house with one bathroom and I was still having to do all the cooking etc.

I’d imagine, like with every other illness, you need to be susceptible to catching covid in order to catch it. I read an article about a man in his 50s who got very ill, doctors eventually realised he had AIDS. He’d been married for 25 years, and before that had only slept with one other woman. They discovered that other woman had died of AIDS some years ago. However his wife, who’d been having non barrier method sex with him that whole time, was clean as a whistle. She and their three children were HIV negative. So she obviously wasn’t susceptible to that virus.

My aunt had Covid... but her husband and 2 teens did not get it.

I had Covid and we think my DH did although he wasn’t tested as it was early in the pandemic and he didn’t reflect until later that he was exhausted for two days. At the time he couldn’t have got a test for those symptoms.
My two DD’s didn’t get it or at least had no symptoms.

The first time 3 of us got it, not sure about no. 4 (may have had a COVID toe). Second time 2 of us got it, but mildly.

GP here - got it. Rest of family didn't (husband and 2x DC)