Home quarantine: A numerical evaluation of SARS‐CoV‐2 spread in a single‐family house

Abstract

The worldwide pandemic of SARS-CoV-2 which causes coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has resulted in first-time responses in recent history as most of affected countries are confining residents to their homes. When sick people are detected, home quarantine is usually recommended because of the lack of available hospital rooms for first-stage symptoms that do not require constant medical monitoring. In this situation, one can thus wonder about the transmission of the disease to other household members. In this paper, we numerically investigate the transport of the aerosol generated by an infected person quarantined to his bedroom to the other rooms in a typical French detached house by performing TRNSYS-CONTAM simulations. The intent here is to assess the exposure concentration to the virus of the other household members when simple strategies are employed to reduce the risk of airborne transmission. Due to the uncertainty regarding the evaluation of different parameters such as the emission of contaminated droplets and the infectivity of the occupants, critical cases have been considered in this study. The main results show that, even if remediation actions lower the exposure of other occupants, the risk of contamination remains high even if the contagious person is quarantined to its bedroom.