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People who are fully vaccinated against Covid but who catch the virus are just as contagious to other members of their household as unvaccinated infected people, research suggests.
Households are a key framework for the transmission of Covid infections (pdf), with frequent prolonged daily contact with an infected person linked to an increased risk of catching the virus.
However, questions remain, including the actual proportion of household contacts who are infected from an initial case, the duration of their infection and the impact of vaccination on the risk of transmission of the virus and the possibility of catching it. .
Now, a study has found that while vaccination against Covid is crucial in preventing serious illness and death, even completely bitten individuals catch the virus – and pass it on.
Write in the Lancet, researchers from a number of institutions including Imperial College London and the UK Health Security Agency (HSA) report how they analyzed data from 204 household contacts of 138 people infected with the Delta variant.
Of these contacts, who were recruited within five days of the onset of symptoms from a member of their household and were tested daily for 14 days, 53 were infected, of whom 31 were fully vaccinated and 15 were not not been vaccinated.
The results suggest that even those who are fully vaccinated are at significant risk of becoming infected, with analysis showing that a fully vaccinated contact has a 25% chance of catching the virus from an infected household member while a contact unvaccinated has a 38% chance of getting infected. .
However, the numbers don’t shed light on the severity of the disease, while the team warns those numbers fall within a range of possible values, meaning the exact size of the difference is unclear.