![\"News](\"https:\/\/media.healthday.com\/Images\/icimages\/swab472.jpg\"\/)
By Robin Foster<\/b>
HealthDay Reporter<\/i><\/p>\n
TUESDAY, June 30, 2020 (HealthDay News)<\/p>\n
A majority of Americans who are diagnosed with COVID-19<\/a> don’t know who passed the virus to them, two new government reports show.<\/p>\n In the first study, researchers found that only 27% of more than 360 Colorado residents diagnosed with COVID-19<\/a> knew of any contact with someone who had coronavirus in the two weeks before they were tested.<\/p>\n That percentage was higher in a second study, with 46% of 350 people diagnosed certain about who might have infected them. But both studies suggest that most people infected with coronavirus don’t actually know who exposed them.<\/p>\n “This just emphasizes the fact that while we know how COVID-19<\/a> is transmitted we do not have a good idea of how to assess our risk when interacting with other people,” said Dr. Eric Cioe Pena, Director of Global Health at Northwell Health, New Hyde Park, NY.<\/p>\n He wasn’t involved in the new study, but said it shows how, “important it is that we maintain distance from people that are not in our household, wear a mask, and keep up our vigilance so that we can protect our communities from this virus.”<\/p>\n Among those in the study who knew they had come into contact with an infected person, the most commonly reported relationship was a family member (27%) or a coworker (25%) in the Colorado study. In the second study, it was most often a family member (45%) or a work colleague (34%).<\/p>\n Both reports were published June 30 by researchers from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention<\/a> in the agency’s publication Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report<\/i>.<\/p>\n “Fewer than one-half of patients were aware of recent close contact with someone with COVID-19<\/a>, highlighting a need for increased screening, case investigation, contact tracing and isolation of infected persons during periods of community transmission,” the researchers of the second study wrote. “A majority of COVID-19<\/a> patients reported working during the two weeks preceding illness, and few had the ability to telework, underscoring the need for enhanced measures to ensure workplace safety.”<\/p>\n Those measures should include social distancing and more widespread use of face masks, they added.<\/p>\n In the Colorado study, the most commonly reported activities in the two weeks before becoming ill included attending gatherings of more than 10 persons (44%), traveling domestically (29%), working in a health care setting (28%), visiting a health care setting not as a health care worker (23%), and using public transportation (22%).<\/p>\n
![\"MedicalNews\"](\"https:\/\/images.medicinenet.com\/images\/HealthDay\/healthday.png\")