UKC

My son tested positive last Friday via PCR test (after 2 positive LFT) so we've been self-isolating since last Friday (6 days)  He's fine, but has had all the classic symptoms.  Me, OH and daughter have all taken PCR tests (all negative) and are doing daily LFT (all negative).

We're obviously giving him plenty of space, and the house is being kept well ventilated, but there's a limit to how distanced a family can be from one member while we're all stuck in the same house.

Anyone been in a similar situation?  Did you eventually test positive, or did you manage to dodge the virus?

Presumably you and your wife are vaccinated, so fingers crossed you stay clear for 4 more days. I've heard from colleagues where partners haven't got it from the other one, even before vaccines (or the more transmissible strains).

Yes, both double-jabbed.  Daughter is 12 so she's obviously not vaccinated yet.

I keep expecting a test to come back positive, but so far so good...

I've no advice but last March (2020, at the beginning) Mrs 65 came down with covid symptoms and was bedridden for about 5 days. She never, ever gets colds, flus or generally ill. She wasn't tested around this time but it was almost certainly Covid as she has profoundly lost her sense of smell and she'd also been at a work event the venue of which later turned out to have been the epicentre of a major covid outbreak.

When she got ill we isolated from each other for two weeks, I lived at the other end of the house and passed food and drinks through the bedroom door. It does however seem highly unlikely that I wouldn't have caught it what with us living together normally during the two weeks she was probably carrying it. I developed no symptoms. The first time either of us tested was a couple of months ago with a LFT, which we both do regularly now when it seems appropriate (before/after close contact with people, trips up north etc). So far so negative.

Good luck with it, at least testing is easier now. 

Common for everyone in a household to come down with it but if you’re very careful it’s entirely avoidable. 
I personally know of several households where one member has come up positive but everyone else has dodged the bullet. Stay switched on about infection control and you’ve got a fighting chance.

Good luck

Edit: should add, try and keep the whole thing lighthearted and a bit of a game… can be a bit traumatic for younger kids with a sensitive nature.
 

I recently finished a 10 day isolation after my housemate tested positive. We effectively quarantined him in his room the day he got symptoms and I cooked his meals for him. We still had to share a shower room but he disinfected it with spray each time he used it. The hardest thing was dealing with the extreme heat with all the doors shut. I lent him my fan and brought him regular bottles of ice. Eventually we worked out a system so that he could safely spend a couple of hours outside in the garden each day. 

Neither my landlady nor I caught it, we tested regularly with home LFTs and I took a PCR test at the end of the period too. It's certainly doable but requires discipline and good humour.

Thanks for the replies - sounds like it's possible to avoid getting infected, although I fear we're not being quite as stringent as some of you!  Fingers crossed.

They say the infected one should use the bathroom, shower last on a night, so the virus isn't airborne and has time to settle, as wearing a mask in the shower isn't so practical! 

My daughter’s boyfriend’s sister got it. He and his mum tested negative. 3 days later he got symptoms and tested positive.

His Mum never got it. She was double jabbed though.

I had something fairly nasty in Feb 2020 which would now definitely trigger a Covid test. At the time, it wasn't on our radar really so just treated it like any other nasty cough/ cold/ bug. So didn't hug or kiss hubby and stayed away from vulnerable people. My husband never developed any symptoms of whatever it was I had. We do, however, have windows open in the house very regularly. Even all through winter we sleep with the window open and bathroom window is often open to air. I suspect that had an impact in lowering viral load. Obviously, if it was Covid, back then the strain was less transmissible than the current one. Of course, my husband could have just been asymptomatic. Or maybe it wasn't Covid. 

No direct answer to your questions, sorry.

Consider portable HEPA units, especially in parts of the house you have to share during the day and outside bedroom doors at night (ideally next to the bed of the infectious one, but that could be annoying to sleep - silicone rubber earplugs might fix that).

The other approach is positive input ventilation.  I have made a bodge to do this in advance using cardboard and some 120 mm 12V fans.  These can be fit to windows open to their ventilator position with a bit of bodge tape and are near silent; inwards on the uninflected bedroom(s), outwards on the infected.  Probably won’t do us as much good as the children are young, so isolating them in any way would be totally inappropriate.  But still, might reduce viral loads especially at night…. 

My son went to stay with his student mates in a shared house. Three days after arriving, one of them tested positive so they isolated for ten days, playing board games, hugging,  kissing, watching TV. None of the others caught it (regular negative  LFTs and no symptoms).  It’s a weird one!

When do you think your son caught it?  Given you’ve all tested negative he may well be virus free and caught it a few days earlier than you think. 

Wife and I just finished isolation. Teacher son visited for weekend, next day colleague rang to say he was positive, son tested himself with lateral flow, bingo positive (confirmed with PCR). Obviously we'd been mixing for almost 24 hr, but after test he kept to his boxroom bedroom, we got all food and drinks for him, washed his dishes in bowl after ours. We did all eat and talk a few metres apart in garden when weather OK. Main problem was single bathroom and toilet...he only used bath, we only used shower, we operated washbasin tap and toilet flush with an implement, strictly separate towels. We often forgot about not touching light switches and door handles. Son was always symptomless and tested negative by lateral flow after about 5 days. We were always negative.

I broke rules by immediately collecting 2 backpacks of food from shops after he tested positive (presumably after under 24 hours contact I was unlikely to be infectious). Incidentally we had all been double jabbed (son Pfizer, us AZ). Son's probable infector had only had single Pfizer and his only symptom was "loss" of taste and smell, which hasn't returned....apparently everything smells of gasoline.

I had it in January 2021

Husband never got tested, but had zero symptoms so either escaped unscathed or was asymptomatic. We didn't make any changes to our living arrangements and it was too cold to keep windows open.

(That of course was before home lateral flow testing and vaccines were available to us)

The experience here was that the original variant would get, say, 2 out of 5 in a house, whereas Kent variant would get 4 out of 5 on average. No information on Delta as yet, but the landscape has changed massively with vaccination.

FWIW one of the kids I teach had it recently (so delta), PCR confirmed and all that. She was telling me she shares a room with two siblings, and kept doing that while she was poorly - and neither of her siblings caught it from her. Like someone said earlier, even with delta it still seems a bit random on who catches it and who doesn't.

Good luck and I hope no one in the family get very poorly.

Thanks very much for all the replies!  If I had to summarise everyone's experiences in two words then I'd say: It's random.

I can see lots of people being very careful, thoughtful and strict.  But there are also plenty of stories about people sharing spaces with minimal precautions - and still not getting infected.

We haven't been very strategic about our behaviour; we generally don't spend time in the same room as my son (so he's spending most of the day in his bedroom, which isn't unusual - he's 15)  We're not sitting together for meals etc.  But I still find myself holding my breath if I take something into his room (although that's probably a good plan regardless of Covid...)

If your son is old (and well enough) then confining him to his room as far as possible sounds like a good idea, even bringing meals to him. Tbh I planned to do this myself, but my husband said that he was probably already infected and I didn't have the energy to argue.

Ventilation currently appears to be your best protection. I'd probably also ask your son to mask up when in communal parts of the house and use a mask myself when in a shared space with him - masks aren't perfect, but they are also an easy measure to take.

If he's willing to, if he was to wear a well fitting FFP3 mask whenever outside his room that would be very likely to prevent transmission.

My partner caught it in March 2020. We didn’t isolate from each other at all - shared a bed etc. I just assumed I was also going to get it and there was not much point trying to avoid it. As far as I’m aware I didn’t catch anything, although there was no testing available then.

Probably a stupid move in retrospect as she is still ill 16 months on, and if we’d both ended up like that, I’m not sure who would have looked after us.

No the ffp3 mask needs to be worn by healthy family members - they are designed to protect the to wearer by keeping nasties out and any covid in his exhaled breath will be able to escape though the valve.

Son needs a non-valved mask.

We really can't be sure where he caught it.  He'd actually been self-isolating for most of the last 2 weeks of the school term (due to one of his classmates testing positive) but always tested negative.  He returned to school for the final 2 days of term.  He did spend an afternoon in the park with friends at the start of the summer hols, then tested positive 3 days later - so that's our best guess.

I've been impressed with the LFT as a result of this episode.  Both my kids and my OH have been doing twice-weekly LFT for months (OH is a teacher, kids are both at school) and they've always been negative.  But as soon as my son caught Covid he returned 2 positive tests - impressive.  Gives me a bit more confidence of the accuracy of the LFT.

Yes, a non-valved FFP3, sorry (or FFP2, if only valved FFP3s exist - I know non-valved FFP2s do as I have a box in the cupboard).  Valved masks should not be used at all in a COVID context as you want protection in both directions in all cases.

Edit: non valved FFP3s exist e.g.:

https://www.protectivemasksdirect.co.uk/non-valved-ffp3-mask-individual-hy9...

My son (just 3 at the time) tested positive last August. I think he probably got it at preschool. Symptoms were like a bad cold for ten days.

He was wanting lots of cuddles while ill and also wanted to sleep with us every night. We made a conscious decision that his mental well-being was more important than us not getting covid (obv no vaccines at the time, late 30s so fairly low risk), so we mainly just focused on looking after him. I did stop eating his leftovers, persuaded him that blowing raspberries wasn't fun for a while and tried to avoid him coughing directly in our faces. But that was it really. As it was August we were in the garden when we could be.

My wife had some gastro type symptoms but nothing else and had a negative test the same day as his positive. I got a very mild dry cough a couple of days after his positive test which I suspected afterwards was probably covid, but I didn't get a test because we were already isolating and a positive result wouldn't have extended my isolation period anyway (at the time, it was 10 days from symptoms for a positive case or 14 days for household). After another 10 days I still had the mild cough so went for a test before coming out of isolation, at that point I was negative. So, I suspect I did get it but was lucky as it was very mild and pretty short lived.

Edit to add, secondary attack rates in household contacts are higher for Delta than they were for Alpha or for anything before that. Although obviously being vaccinated helps a lot.

Given you can spread Covid for up to 10 days after symptoms start (according to .gov), and there appears to be some agreement that you are most infectious within the first five days of symptoms, then there’s a very good chance you will dodge this bullet and as someone who likes a theoretical punt I reckon you will dodge it.

My sister had it, and managed to not pass it on to her OH or daughter, they spent a couple of hours per day in the same room max. and were careful about cross contaminating stuff. I guess in my sisters case not drinking milk out of the bottle and putting it back in the fridge.

On another note, my mate and his wife have just tested positive (PCR), both double jabbed, while she shows as positive on LFTs, he's still a negative on the LFT, even yesterday, two days after his PCR, she's got usual symptoms, he has none.

Just to add, they didn't use any special masks, she's a nurse he's a doctor.

It was massively variable even with the original variant. 
We survived my daughter being here with covid through ventilation, hand sanitising, cleaning and mask wearing. 

My wife's ward was able to contain outbreaks. When the Kent variant arrived it went through 100% of the ward. We prepared by switching on the outside deep freeze and filling it with milk,  bread etc. It was kind of weird that we knew it was coming but almost now acceptable. All 5 of the family had it within days. Fortunately staff were coming done with it at different times so not as much impact as could have been.