- The transmission rate of the coronavirus remains high, although many people follow safety guidelines that include face mask, social distancing, and good hand hygiene.
- A new study further proves why those measures are mandatory, detailing an end to “superspreading” events in Boston in late February that led to the infection of tens of thousands of people across the US and around the world.
- Nearly 100 people who attended a business event developed COVID-19 and spread the virus to others. At that time, safety measures were not advised or enforced.
The rate at which the novel coronavirus is spreading remains high in the US and other countries, although there have been positive developments in recent weeks. The world still had nearly 6.9 million active cases of COVID-19 on Wednesday morning out of more than 24.1 million positive diagnoses. Around the world, 830,000 people have died so far from COVID-19 complications, including more than 182,000 Americans. The US has the highest death toll and the highest number of recorded cases, closing at 6 million total COVID-19 confirmations. More than 2.5 million of those remain active, with the disease spreading at a rate of more than 40,000 confirmed cases per day. And those are just the people who are being tested.
The virus is spreading so fast because people in some communities are not resecting the simple guidelines that officials have been advising for months now. The use of face masks in combination with social distancing and good hand hygiene can help reduce the spread of the virus, yet some people still do not believe that something as simple as a mask is useful. Those people often pay the price.
We have already seen enough evidence that proves how efficiently this virus spreads from studies and anecdotes detailing how one person infects dozens of other people. It happened over and over again in the early days of the pandemic, and it’s happening now – like the story we told you earlier this week where one woman infected 56 others at a Starbucks. The latest paper says that at least 90 people who did not follow any kind of safety guidelines at an event in late February turned out to be superspreaders who may have infected 20,000 people.
Researchers studied the COVID-19 transmission in the Boston area at the beginning of the pandemic by following the genomes of several patients to determine how the disease circulated in the region. The findings were published in pre-print format on medRxiv, which means that others have not yet reviewed the study.
The researchers explain that 200 people attended a biotech conference in late February. More than 90 participants later tested positive, and the event is now known to be a major source of COVID-19 transmission in the early days of the pandemic. The scientists followed the viral genome of 28 people who attended the business conference. They could then trace a particular strain of the virus that reached several U.S. states (Virginia, North Carolina, and Texas) and other countries (France, Sweden, Slovakia, and Australia).
The paper does not list the number of people who may have been infected as a result, but it does say that cases in several other states and countries could be linked to the Boston event. Bronwyn MacInnis told CNN that the conference was a “perfect storm,” and the superspreading event could be linked to about 20,000 cases. Many factors made the conference an unfortunate perfect storm. “That the virus was introduced at all at the conference was unfortunate,” MacInnis said, noting that his estimate is not exact but “communicates the scale.”
“If tens of thousands of individuals appear large, it is important to point out that it is in the context of a pandemic that has infected tens of millions of people,” she added.
This all happened between February 26 and 27, at a time when President Trump downplayed the threat of COVID-19. He only declared a national emergency a few weeks later.
“When it happened it was critical: it was planned just when we collectively began to appreciate the looming threat of COVID at home – if it was a week later the event was likely canceled,” MacInnis said, adding that it had the virus an opportunity to spread widely “before extensive testing capabilities, shutdowns, social distance, and masking took place.”
She added: “The other critical factor was the population in which the virus came: people who had come from many different places (including some where COVID was already circulating), and who then returned home, often it unaware of the virus with them. “
It was The Boston Globe that identified the event as the international meeting of leaders of the biotechnology company Biogen, which was hosted at the Marriott Long Wharf hotel.
The company acknowledged the incident and said the meeting took place at a time when general knowledge about the virus was limited. “We adhere closely to the prevailing official guidelines,” Biogen said CNN. “We would never have deliberately put anyone in danger. When we learned that some of our colleagues were ill, we did not know the cause was COVID-19, but we immediately alerted public health authorities and took steps to limit the spread. “
The governor of Massachusetts, Charlie Baker, said at a news conference that he had long viewed the Biogen conference as a “seminal event” and that he was criticized for saying that a few months before the study was published. “This is not a crime for anyone, but at that point in time no one wore masks, no one was socially distant, no one behaved themselves with worries about the presence of the virus. I mean all the rules of the game regarding that have changed , ‘said Baker. “It speaks to the power of that virus to move from one person to another.”
It is unlikely that a similar superspreading event can occur right now, given that most major personal events for the foreseeable future have been canceled. The same study also highlighted COVID-19 transmission in several areas of Boston, including a nursing home and a homeless shelter. The full study is available at this link.
Chris Smith began writing about gadgets as a hobby, and before he knew it he was sharing his views on technical things with readers all over the world. When he does not write about gadgets, he unfortunately fails to stay away from them, even though he tries desperately. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
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