Unvaccinated people are less likely to contract COVID-19 if members of their family have some sort of immunity against the virus, a new study suggests.
If an unvaccinated person within a five person family unit - with the other four members either having received the jab or acquired natural immunity via infection - their risk of contracting the virus was reduced by 97 percent. .
Living in a family with multiple people having immunity to the virus reduced the risk of catching the virus for non-immune people.
The team used infection and inoculation data to determine how many people within each household had some sort of immunity from the virus - whether through natural antibodies from infection or from having received the vaccine.
Having three members of a four- or five- member household with immunity reduced the risk of infection by more than 90 percent for the unvaccinated person as well
Two members of a household having immunity reduced overall risk of infection by at least 75 percent, and one immune person in the family cut the risk by nearly 50 percent
America is likely closer to herd immunity than the numbers tell, though, with more than 44 million people having tested positive for the virus since the pandemic began last year