Sharing a drink or other eating utensils with someone who has hepatitis C will not put you at risk for contracting the disease. Hepatitis C is spread by contact with infected blood, so unless there is blood on the glass and it contacted on an open wound in your mouth, there is no risk of infection.
When blood infected with hepatitis C enters the bloodstream of a previously uninfected person, there is an incubation period of about 7 weeks, on average, during which the illness causes no signs or symptoms.
Once it enters the bloodstream, the virus travels to the liver where it inhabits liver cells known as hepatocytes. After a certain number of hepatocytes are infected, the immune system mounts a response. This immune response is actually responsible for the damage caused to the liver because of hepatitis infection.
While you cannot contract Hepatitis C by sharing a drink with an infected person, there are other types of hepatitis (and other infectious diseases) that can be transmitted through saliva.
Hepatitis A, E and possibly F are transmitted through the oral-fecal route, meaning through the ingestion of fecal matter from an infected person. This can take place when an infected person uses the washroom and doesn’t practice proper hand hygiene afterward, then contaminates surfaces shared by others. If someone’s fingers come into contact with one of those surfaces, then that person uses his or her hands to eat, he or she could become infected. Poor hygiene and poor sanitary conditions in some countries lead to high rates of infection.
One-third of people in the United States of America have been exposed to the hepatitis A virus.