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Americans were more likely to contract COVID-19 during a month where someone in their household had a birthday, a new study suggests.
Researchers at Harvard Medical School and the RAND Corporation looked at data on positive coronavirus cases as related to family birthdays in order to find links between celebrations and potential outbreaks.
They found that households in counties with a high prevalence of the virus with a recent family birthday were 30 percent more likely to test positive.
While the team can not determine which families held gatherings or parties for their birthdays, they believe the research shows that small get-togethers throughout the pandemic did cause COVID-19 to spread.
Children's birthday parties became vectors for spreading the pandemic in counties that already had large outbreaks. This could be because parents were less likely to cancel birthday plans for children when they were already socially isolated due to school closures
The counties that already had the highest rates of COVID (tenth decile) were much more likely to see COVID-19 case growth around times where someone had a birthday
'These gatherings are an important part of the social fabric that holds together families and society as a whole.' said Dr Anupam Jena, the study's lead author and associate professor of Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School.
'However, as we show, in high-risk areas, they can also expose households to COVID-19 infections.'
For the study, published in JAMA Network
