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NEW DELHI (BLOOMBERG) – Coronavirus super-spreaders were behind the Covid-19 explosion in India, the country with the most cases after the United States, researchers said.
A group of patients that included about 8 percent of India’s confirmed cases subsequently led to nearly two-thirds of their total infections, scientists said on Wednesday (September 30) in a study published in the journal Science.
The research, based on tracing more than three million contacts in the southern states of Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu as of Aug. 1, is the first major transmission study in a developing country.
While most research on the pandemic has come from China, Europe and North America, cases are increasing in India and other developing countries, according to researchers led by Dr. Ramanan Laxminarayan, director of the Center for Dynamics, Disease Economics and Politics that the study wrote.
Barriers to health care are higher in these nations and the risk of becoming seriously ill and dying from Covid-19 is higher, they said.
“We’ve never had this degree of information to say, hey, some people are really spreading the virus in a massive way,” Dr. Laxminarayan said in an interview.
In contrast to the minority of super-spreaders, 71 percent of confirmed cases whose contacts were traced were not found to have transmitted the virus to anyone.
A nationwide serosurvey showed that one in 15 Indians has been exposed to the coronavirus. Hospitals in several states are now struggling to secure medical oxygen, necessary to help patients with breathing problems on their own.
Data for the Science study was collected by thousands of contact trackers during the India shutdown, when mass gatherings were banned, schools were closed and people were ordered to wear masks in public.
Almost 130 million people live in the two states of India, representing around 10 percent of the country’s population. India has registered more than 6.2 million cases of Covid-19.
Both states reported their first Sars-CoV-2 infections on March 5. Health workers tracked up to 80 contacts per confirmed case, using improved skills and resources to routinely track possible transmitters of HIV and tuberculosis, said Dr. Laxminarayan.
The prolific Sars-CoV-2 transmitters tended to spread the virus during prolonged close contact on buses and other forms of transportation, according to the researchers, who were also from Princeton University, the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and governments. states of India. In such settings, there was a 79% chance that an infection would occur.
That compares to just a one in 40 chance of contracting the virus from someone in the community who is not a family member, said Dr. Laxminarayan.
However, children under the age of 14 were found to be frequent “silent” transmitters of the virus, especially to their parents and peers.
“This shows that even without schools functioning, child-to-child transmission appears to be quite important,” he said. “As terrible as it is to say, with two children at home, it is actually important to keep the children at home.”
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