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Since the start of the pandemic, the new coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) has been shown to be highly communicable and numerous studies have been conducted around the world to identify the increased risk of infection.
For nearly a year, public health officials around the world have struggled to understand how the disease is spreading.
Travel has been restricted, schools and gyms have been closed, and radical quarantine decisions have been made in many countries. But despite these restrictions, the number of infections continued to rise.
Studies have shown that there are specific situations in which SARS-CoV-2 spreads more easily. In New York, for example, tracking direct contacts has shown that 70% of new cases come from small assemblies and households, reports ABC News.
“Informal gatherings could have played the biggest role in the spread of the disease.“Said epidemiologist John Brownstein, contributor to ABC News.
When people gather in small groups with friends and family, they are more likely to “guard down“, not wearing masks and staying together indoors for longer periods of time, which facilitates the transmission of the virus.
In a recent study at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, researchers found that for children and teens who tested positive for COVID-19, small social gatherings were where they were most exposed.
Also, at the beginning of the pandemic, the follow-up of contacts linked the spread of the virus to restaurants and bars. Like small gatherings at home, in restaurants people eat near other people who do not wear masks and are in a small space with little ventilation.
As for schools, although they are another environment in which many people tend to be indoors, Brownstein said schools were generally safe.
To date, more than 80,800,000 people around the world have been infected with the new coronavirus, according to real-time data from Worldometers.
