Indoor transmission of SARS-CoV-2

Hua Qian; Te Miao; Li LIU; Xiaohong Zheng; Danting Luo; Yuguo Li

The emergence of homes as the most common COVID-19 outbreak venue in China is not surprising. During the COVID-19 epidemic in mainland China, homes became temporary quarantine places. Our estimated home dominance of 79·9% is close to the official estimate of 83% of the so-called household clusters among the nearly 1000 clusters (not outbreaks) defined by the China National Health Commission. 4 After Wuhan announced its city lockdown on 23 January, the warning message spread throughout the country. People in provinces outside Hubei also began to stay at home. Most Chinese families have one child, and some families may also include grandparents. The relatively low number of cases in these home outbreaks might be considered an advantage of compulsory home quarantine because transmission was limited to the small number of family members. Similar stay-athome policies have now been implemented elsewhere during the pandemic.