South Florida Sun-Sentinel Palm Beach (Sunday)
Silent spreader creeping into Broward households
Most residents catch virus from someone they are living with
As South Floridians eat at restaurants, shop for groceries and try to live normal lives during the pandemic, many are bringing coronavirus back home, spreading it to family members before their symptoms arise.
As many as 80% of the Broward County residents who got COVID-19 in recent weeks likely caught it from someone they live with, according to the state Department of Health.
“People need to know that even within their own families they have to social distance,” said Broward Mayor Dale Holness.
Some of the spread within South Florida households may be attributed to children and young adults who make up a growing proportion of coronavirus cases but tend not to show symptoms.
‘Nowhere to run’
When Dwayne Bennett tested positive, he self-isolated in his bedroom to stop the virus from racing through his Fort Lauderdale home. Still, his wife, Wanda, caught the virus. Bennett, 39, suffered coughs, chills and body aches. His wife has a cough, body aches and has lost her sense of smell.
So how did the virus invade their home? Bennett manages an entertainment business and came into contact with clients who later tested positive. He and his wife have a 21-year-old daughter who works from home and a 19-year-old daughter who works in a restaurant. “Yes, the kids could have brought it in. They could have been exposed but there is no telling,” he said.
On Friday, Bennett’s two older daughters went to get tested, although they don’t have symptoms. He and his wife are monitoring their 10-month old for symptoms.
“There really is nowhere to run from this thing at this point,” Bennett said. “We tried to keep a distance as much as possible.”
Researchers at the University of Florida have found that nearly one in five people in the same household as a COVID-19 patient are likely to develop the infection.
The incubation period — which on average is five days but can be up to two weeks — can be an especially dangerous time, the researchers found. They concluded that COVID-19 is more infectious before symptoms appear than previous coronaviruses such as SARS and MERS.
‘‘The infectivity is pretty high during the incubation period when the patient didn’t show any symptoms,” said Yang Yang, the UF associate professor of biostatistics who led the research to evaluate how commonly patients transmit COVID-19 to close contacts.
He also found people 60 and older are most vulnerable to contracting COVID-19 from family members or roommates.
ln some South Florida homes, the virus has spread among family members who live apart. Florida Rep. Shevrin Jones, felt feverish, fatigued and achy on June 26 when he went to the hospital and learned he had COVID-19. Within days, the virus had infected nearly everyone in his family, even those who didn’t live with him. His brother, his parents, his aunts — each had different symptoms and varied in how ill they became.
“We are big huggers,” Jones said. “I am sure we got it through hugging, or maybe someone coughed or sneezed and we weren’t paying attention. It’s just a very contagious virus.”
Father on ventilator
The number of young adults testing positive for COVID-19 has increased dramatically in recent weeks in Florida, and their social nature may be putting all family members at risk. Michelle Zymet of Plantation pleaded with her 21-year-old stepson to avoid going out with friends and to always wear a mask.
“It’s just not the time,” she says she told him, begging him to think about his dad, who is at a higher risk of severe COVID-19 illness because he is overweight and diabetic.
One evening in early June, the young man went out against her wishes, gathered with friends and removed his mask while eating and drinking. Days later, he felt cold symptoms and a friend at the get-together told him she had tested positive for the new coronavirus. By then, it already had taken hold in the family’s household.
The young man’s father, John Place, 42, is now fighting the virus at Westside Regional Hospital’s intensive care unit.
The illness’s spread among Zymet’s family highlights the outcome dreaded by authorities who feared the recent surge of cases hitting younger Floridians would spread to older, more vulnerable people.
“They don’t necessarily listen. It could be peer pressure,” said Zymet, 42. “Maybe they think, ‘None of us are sick. We are fine.’ They don’t understand many of us are asymptomatic and are positive carriers of the virus.”
The young man, who did not want to talk to reporters, had told his father and stepmother that he initially thought he had a common cold and took over-the-counter medication. When he heard about his friend testing positive for the new coronavirus, he still didn’t think he had it.
But members of the family started to fall ill one by one, starting with his 14-year-old brot
her, who is also overweight and was wheezing, coughing and lethargic.
The 6-year-old sister had only a runny nose. The stepmother was achy, with a fever and chills. They all tested positive, but only Place, the father, required hospitalization after four days of fever and nonstop coughing. He has now been in the hospital for nearly three weeks.
With Place unable to work at his photo booth business, Zymet’s friends are raising funds for the family as they brace to handle hefty medical bills.
Zymet said she has been called an “awful mother,” and an “evil witch” for placing the blame on her stepson, but she said she thought it was important to share her family’s story amid a surge of infections first detected among young people.
Zymet says her stepson has been helping taking care of the younger children and researching the disease while she juggles work in between calls to the hospital, nurses and doctors.
“This has definitely brought us together,” she added. “We could have eventually gotten this disease somewhere else. But it is the unfortunate truth that he did bring it home.”
Distancing at home
South Florida mayors gathered earlier this week with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and told him that gatherings of young people were a key factor in the rise in cases that emerged in June in their region.
Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Gimenez said younger people were celebrating the end of school or college, in some cases joining street protests and otherwise just getting together at house parties, underground venues and restaurants that converted themselves into bars late at night in violation of the rules.
With so many close-knit, multigenerational families in the community, spread to older members of families seemed inevitable, he said.
“Since the young kids started infecting each other, now we see the results as more older folks are now going into the hospital,” Gimenez said. “Exactly what we feared — that they were going to take it to their parents, that they were going to take it to their grandparents.”
Lisa Lee, a public health expert specializing in infectious disease epidemiology and associate vice president for research and innovation at Virginia Tech, said how and who gets the virus has been unpredictable, which is why everyone needs to be extra cautious.
“Families are making the assumption that everyone in that unit is uninfected and that’s a mistake,” Lee said. “You have to assume if anyone is interacting with the public, they are at risk for infection. The numbers are so high in Florida it can be anyplace you interact with anyone for long enough, especially if you are not wearing a mask.”
Lee said while kids are less likely to be severely affected by the virus, it’s important to keep them distanced from grandparents or family with medical conditions. “We have to remember that there are family members for whom this virus is deadly.”
Paula Thaqi, director of the Florida Department of Health in Broward, said via a written statement that people can minimize the risk of spreading the virus within households by isolating away from family members, wearing a mask, maintaining social distance with other family members, using separate bathrooms or disinfecting after each use, and not sharing personal or household items.