Air hugs and bed rest – how to self-isolate as a couple

Rosa Silverman 02 October 2020 6:32pm BST When Sarah’s* symptoms started in mid-March, she was all but sure what they meant. First came a temperature, then a nasty continuous cough. As a GP,

the 36-year-old from north London was not going to take any chances and shut herself in her bedroom, safely away from her husband and two young children, to whom she feared spreading the

coronavirus. “I was upstairs on the top floor in our bedroom with access to my own bathroom,” she says. For seven days, her husband slept downstairs and she didn’t speak to her children in

person at all. “My husband cooked and left meals outside my room, mainly frozen ones from Cook as he was exhausted from looking after the kids.” It’s a tricky situation to be in, not least

if you have young children. But it becomes trickier still for couples who go down at once, or infect each other, as may be the case with Donald Trump and his wife Melania. The US President

announced that he and the First Lady had both tested positive for coronavirus and were now self-isolating. “We will get through this TOGETHER!” he added, with characteristic bombast. The

degree of togetherness he had in mind was, however, unclear. > Tonight, @FLOTUS and I tested positive for COVID-19. We will begin > our quarantine and recovery process immediately. We 

will get through > this TOGETHER! > — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 2, 2020 According to NHS guidelines in Britain, those with symptoms or who have tested positive for

Covid-19 should stay away from others in their household “as much as possible”, phraseology that appears to acknowledge the fact that for those who don’t live in the White House this may be

easier said than done. The advice goes on to say you should stay on your own in one room as much as possible and keep the door closed; avoid using shared spaces, such as the kitchen, at the

same time as other people; eat your meals in your room; and use a separate bathroom or else use the bathroom after everyone else and clean it each time. Inevitably, not everyone will be as

diligent as Sarah when it comes to following the guidelines within their own household. Kate*, a 48-year-old mother-of-two, also from north London, fell ill with the virus in the spring,

shortly followed by her husband. Both felt very unwell, but parenthood meant they couldn’t both shut themselves away. “You’ve still got your kids to look after,” says Kate. “You have to make

dinner for them while feeling exhausted and wanting to go to bed, and you end up putting yourself last. Then it takes a lot longer to recover.” According to experts, Kate was right in

assuming there was little point in keeping away from her husband once they were both already ill. Dr Bharat Pankhania, a senior clinical lecturer at the University of Exeter’s College of

Medicine and Health, and a communicable disease expert, says: “If you’re a couple and both of you test positive then there’s very little [point] in keeping your distance from each other.

It’s a bit like what you do in a hospital setting: you have your infectious people in the same ward. It makes no difference [to the severity of each patient’s disease].” If your children

have not tested positive, however, that does not mean you shouldn’t try to keep your distance from them, if you can. “You don’t want to generate a case,” he says, advising that infected

parents keep as far as is practicable from their children. Dr Harriet Leyland, clinical adviser to myGP, a health management and appointment booking app used by almost two million NHS

patients, agrees. “The idea of isolating is to prevent the chain of transmission,” she says. “By isolating together and not having contact with anyone else the transmission chain will be

broken.” Of course, sticking to the rules for extended periods at home can be hard. Isaac*, 25, from North West England, suspected he had coronavirus when he lost his sense of taste and

smell around the time lockdown was imposed. Although this wasn’t yet officially recognised as a symptom of Covid-19, he had read enough to know that many sufferers had reported the same

experience. “At first my partner was quite cautious and we kept our distance in the house,” he says. “He slept in a different bedroom and was quite careful about cleaning anything I had

touched. We would watch television in the same room but as far apart as possible, on separate sofas. Because we couldn’t hug properly, we did air hugs.” Isaac’s symptoms continued for three

weeks, but as time wore on the pair began to let down their guard. “We got a bit bored and a bit lax,” Isaac admits. “Even though there was no reason to think the threat had gone away, human

nature kicked in.” Interestingly, Isaac’s partner never developed symptoms, though the couple don’t know if he had the disease asymptomatically. Scientific estimates of how easy it is to

contract the virus from someone in your household vary. In mid-April, researchers in China found the rate of infection among household members was just 16.3 per cent, with adults facing a

greater likelihood of infection than children. In June, a study by researchers based in China and the US put the likelihood of infection within a household slightly higher, at 17.1 per cent.

But findings published this week from an Indian study of 80,000 primary coronavirus cases and 575,000 people with whom they had come into contact were notably different: the chance of

contracting coronavirus from someone you lived with was only about one in 10, this latest research concluded. It also found, perhaps startlingly, that 71 per cent of the primary cases didn’t

pass on the virus. “It seems to indicate a lot of people with Covid don’t really infect anyone else,” Dr Ramanan Laxminarayan, director of the Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics &

Policy in Delhi told the _Today_ programme on BBC Radio 4. “[There were] also differences in people, in terms of how much they shed the virus.” In Sarah’s case, despite her best efforts to

avoid spreading Covid-19 to her family, they caught it anyway. “On day six, before I came out of my bedroom isolation, my daughter started coughing,” she says. “Then my son and husband got

symptoms, too.” But it wasn’t all bad news. Sarah’s family had less severe cases, all made a good recovery, and she later tested positive for Covid antibodies. For once, “it was quite nice

not to have to juggle parenting and illness – and just lie in bed and fully rest when I was feeling pretty rough,” she says. “I wouldn’t normally be allowed to just sleep and be waited on so

much by my husband. I’d have to crack on and do some childcare!” _*Names have been changed_ ARE YOU SELF-ISOLATING FROM LOVED ONES AT HOME? SHARE YOUR EXPERIENCE AND ADVICE IN THE COMMENTS

SECTION BELOW