Living with Kids May Increase Risk of Contracting COVID-19

People living with children are more likely to come down with respiratory infections and colds in general. Therefore, the researchers wanted to determine if there was a similar increased risk of severe COVID-19 infections for adults and, if so, what the outcomes were. But they still have a lot to learn.

“There were clear differences with the restrictions across the U.K. over the two time periods,” Tomlinson says. “For example, schools reopened, although we cannot be certain they were the cause.”

Research has shown that kids have lower susceptibility to COVID-19 and are less likely to get severely ill if they do catch the virus. However, based on modeling from other respiratory infections highlighted in the study, kids are “are a major driver of transmission during the initial phase of an epidemic, in part owing to a high frequency of social contacts,” the researchers write.1

Children get more colds a year than adults, many of which are caused by other coronaviruses. This could be protective against the new coronavirus that causes COVID-19.

The Role of Variants Is Unclear

Tomlinson also says that the difference could be related to the presence of one of the variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, the B.1.1.7 variant, in the United Kingdom. “In our study, we didn’t have information about genetic variants over the majority of the time period studied, so cannot directly look at this.”

Future research, according to Tomlinson, will be able to look at the effect of variant viruses on the relative risk of living with children.

Will Reopening Schools Affect COVID-19 Risk?

Tomlinson says that the researchers will also look more closely at the effect that reopening schools had in the U.K. by comparing data from the time while schools were reopening and after they reopened.

“This will be very useful as we will see whether an association between living with children and contracting SARS-CoV-2 is reduced compared to September to December 2020, when schools were open,” Tomlinson says. “If we find this it would support the idea that transmission within schools increased risk to adults, as opposed to other behaviors associated with having children.”

Like many parents in the U.K. and elsewhere, Tomlinson says that she wants her kids to be able to go back to school. “Our results suggest that there is a small increase in risk associated with living with children, but at least in the U.K., most people at high risk of serious outcomes from SARS-CoV-2 will have been offered vaccination, reducing the risks.”