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A new study suggests that COVID-19 super-spread events are more common than originally believed. Limiting meetings to 10 people or less could help prevent this problem.
Scientists have spent most of the past year trying to make sense of the new coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, which causes the disease responsible for the ongoing pandemic.
As COVID-19 cases approach 49 million worldwide, researchers continue to study how the virus spreads in an effort to find ways to reduce transmission.
A new study by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge examines the spread of COVID-19 in large gatherings. It shows that super-spread events are more common and have a greater impact on the overall spread of the virus than previously thought.
In his study article, published in procedures of the National Academy of Sciences, theThe researchers explain that these events play a “huge” role in the transmission of the virus.
On average, SARS-CoV-2 is transmitted from one person to two or three more. In some cases, the virus is not transmitted. But it can be transmitted to dozens of people in a relatively short period.
A super spread event is a gathering in which the virus is spread from one person to several others. The researchers behind the present study considered that over-propagation occurs when at least six people acquire the virus.
One of those events, a choir practice, took place in Skagit County, WA. The scientists traced 53 COVID-19 cases to a person with a SARS-CoV-2 infection in the trial.
Of the 61 people who attended the 2.5-hour event, 33 tested positive for COVID-19 and another 20 had probable cases.
Since COVID-19 is mainly transmitted through respiratory droplets, the choir practice was a privileged environment for its spread.
Some other notable COVID-19 super-spread events include the White House’s Rose Garden event, where 35 out of approximately 200 attendees acquired the virus and a birthday party in Westport, CT, where 20 out of 50 party-goers acquired the virus.
Researchers at MIT studied data from 60 super spread events, including some from the ongoing COVID-19 outbreak and others from the 2003 SARS outbreak.
To determine the impact of these events on the overall transmission of the virus, the researchers created two mathematical models.
When they plotted the data, using statistical tools, they found that the transmission distribution had had a “thick tail.”
“This means that the probability of extreme events declines more slowly than you might expect,” explained the study’s lead author, Felix Wong, a postdoctoral fellow at MIT.
“These really big super spread events, with 10 to 100 people infected, are much more common than we had anticipated,” he added.
Since the probability of extreme transmission events decreases more slowly than expected, there is a high probability that COVID-19 will spread in large concentrations.
“Supercast events are probably more important than most of us had initially thought. Although they are extreme events, they are likely and therefore likely to occur with a higher frequency than we think. If we can control the super spread events, we have a much better chance of controlling this pandemic. “
– lead author James Collins, Termeer Professor of Medical Engineering and Science at MIT
Many public health officials have recommended limiting the number of people at gatherings from the early stages of the pandemic.
Having more people at an event increases the likelihood that at least one person present has COVID-19 and that the underlying virus will be transmitted to more people.
However, there has been no consistent agreement on what constitutes a great gathering.
While the actual frequency and impact of these super-spreading events may be concerning, the findings can help public health officials develop consistent recommendations.
“It gives us an idea of how we could control the ongoing pandemic, which is by identifying strategies that target super-spreaders,” says Wong.
“One way to do this would be, for example, to prevent someone from interacting with more than 10 people in a large meeting,” he suggests.
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