Unfortunately, all your hard work hasn’t stopped your roommate from contracting COVID. Even though you don’t COVID, what does it mean for you? People have said that if someone you live with has COVID you essentially have it as well, but is that true? Is there a way to avoid contracting it as well? Do you have to stay home and be quarantined just like them? How do you navigate shared spaces?
The National Public Radio wrote an entire article that answers all the questions above and more! Read below to get your questions answered.
Written by Maria Godoy
Posted by NPR.org
If you live in a place with more than one room, identify a room or area – like a bedroom – where the sick person can be isolated from the rest of the household, including pets. (The CDC says that while there's no evidence that pets can transmit the virus to humans, there have been reports of pets becoming infected after close contact with people who have COVID-19.)
Ideally, the "sick room" will have a door that can be kept shut when the sick person is inside — which should really be most of the time.
Even as you try to limit your face-to-face interactions with the sick person, remember, we all need human contact. Try visiting via text or video options like Facetime instead. Old-fashioned phone calls work too.
Whenever you are in the same room together, the CDC recommends that the sick person wear a cloth face covering, even in their own home. In practice, however, Adalja notes that "it can be uncomfortable for someone who's sick to wear a mask all the time in their own house" — hence, another reason to limit those interactions.
Bender Ignacio says if one person in the household is sick, everyone else in the household should consider themselves as possibly having asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic infection, even if they feel fine.
That means you should quarantine yourselves at home, too, she says, and ask a friend or neighbor to help with essential errands like grocery shopping — so you don't run the risk of exposing other people in the store.
Once everyone in the house has recovered from COVID, how do you make sure you’ve purged the infection from your home?
Answer: You need to clean everything, then disinfect.
Did you know that cleaning and disinfecting are two different things? Disinfecting is a form of cleaning, but cleaning doesn’t mean you’re disinfecting. Cleaning is the act of, “making (something or someone) free of dirt, marks, or mess, especially by washing, wiping, or brushing.” While disinfecting is the act of, “cleaning (something), especially with a chemical, in order to destroy bacteria.”
Click here to read the list of items you need to clean and the supplies to use!