![]() ![]() In fact, the latter is the norm, Lloyd-Smith says: "The consistent pattern is that the most common number is zero. ![]() But in real life, some people infect many others and others don't spread the disease at all. Without social distancing, this reproduction number (R) is about three. Most of the discussion around the spread of SARS-CoV-2 has concentrated on the average number of new infections caused by each patient. But superspreading events are ill-understood and difficult to study, and the findings can lead to heartbreak and fear of stigma in patients who touch them off. "If you can predict what circumstances are giving rise to these events, the math shows you can really, very quickly curtail the ability of the disease to spread," says Jamie Lloyd-Smith of the University of California, Los Angeles, who has studied the spread of many pathogens. It's an encouraging finding, scientists say, because it suggests that restricting gatherings where superspreading is likely to occur will have a major impact on transmission, and that other restrictions-on outdoor activity, for example-might be eased. But SARS-CoV-2, like two of its cousins, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), seems especially prone to attacking groups of tightly connected people while sparing others. ![]() Other infectious diseases also spread in clusters, and with close to 5 million reported COVID-19 cases worldwide, some big outbreaks were to be expected. Sometimes a single person infects dozens of people, whereas other clusters unfold across several generations of spread, in multiple venues. Clusters have also occurred aboard ships and at nursing homes, meatpacking plants, ski resorts, churches, restaurants, hospitals, and prisons. A database by Gwenan Knight and colleagues at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) lists an outbreak in a dormitory for migrant workers in Singapore linked to almost 800 cases 80 infections tied to live music venues in Osaka, Japan and a cluster of 65 cases resulting from Zumba classes in South Korea. Many similar "superspreading events" have occurred in the COVID-19 pandemic. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that meticulously reconstructed the tragedy. In the following weeks, 53 choir members got sick, three were hospitalized, and two died, according to a 12 May report by the U.S. But one of them had been suffering for 3 days from what felt like a cold-and turned out to be COVID-19. For 2.5 hours the chorists sang, snacked on cookies and oranges, and sang some more. When 61 people met for a choir practice in a church in Mount Vernon, Washington, on 10 March, everything seemed normal. Science' s COVID-19 reporting is supported by the Pulitzer Center. ![]()
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