Most Covid-19 cases don’t spread virus — it’s the superspreaders we need to stop
Much about how the new coronavirus spreads from one victim to the next remains a maddening mystery. But amid all the frantic efforts to understand transmission, there is one finding that appears consistent: that it is inconsistent.
Some people—most, even—don’t spread the virus to anyone in the course of their infection. Others infect dozens at a time.
It’s a phenomenon that looked, at first, like anomalous anecdotes—a large outbreak from a Washington choir practice, a South Korean megachurch, a wedding in Jordan—but it has become a fixed feature of the new coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2. And researchers have started to settle on numbers for it.
According to mounting data, as little as 10 percent to 20 percent of people infected with SARS-CoV-2 may be responsible for around 80 percent of transmission. On the flip side, a stunning 70 percent of infected people may not pass the virus to anyone, some data suggests. [Continue reading…]