Superspreader

Why some events have few infections while others become Superspreader events

A study coming out in January 2023 shows that there is a higher concentration of smaller aerosolized droplets exhaled from COVID positive patients when compared to healthy people they used as controls.

Sex, weight, nor smoking status didn’t affect results. There was an increased amount of smaller droplets associated with age & severity of infection. 

"Alveolar epithelial cells type 2 may produce more surfactant when infected by viruses, generating more small droplets to carry the virus out of the lung."    

The number of super spreaders is smaller but if at a big event then many can become ill in a short period of time.

"The current study demonstrated that a very small group (3.5% of all participants) was responsible for over 50% of all exhaled aerosols."

"SARS-CoV-2 PCR-positive group, 15.6% of patients were responsible for almost 70% the of exhaled aerosols."

This helps explain why people can attend certain events or travel on particular flights without becoming infected while other events, flights or any other place we have a larger number of people in a confined space can become superspreader events.

We won’t know which event a superspreader might be attending so we are rolling the dice, so to speak, each time we participate in these activities.

This study didn’t look at viral loads per exhaled breath so there should be follow up studies but it does shed some light on why some events or activities become superspreader events.

#transmission #superspreader

Reference:
Aerosol measurement identifies SARS-CoV 2 PCR positive adults compared with healthy controls
January 2023
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0013935122017443