Why Do Some COVID-19 Patients Infect Many Others, Whereas Most Don’t Spread the Virus At All?
Guest Reporter: Jason S Zielonka, MD
One of the key parameters in COVID-19 pandemic epidemiology has been to define the spread metrics, basically identifying how a host spreads the virus to uninfected individuals. The pattern of spread can impact how and which preventative measures such as social distancing and hand washing can impact spread patterns. In particular, two metrics, the average number of new patients infected by each host (the reproduction number, R) and a factor representing the tendency to cluster (the dispersion factor, k) can be used to describe and model the spread of a virus quite well. Higher values of R mean more people are infected by a single host, i.e, the disease is more contagious; lower values of k mean that a host infects a larger number of new patients, i.e., the disease is more clustered.
The reproduction number, R, for SARS-CoV-2, without social distancing, is about 3. But this is an average, taken over an aggregate of patients. For most individuals, R is zero, i.e., most patients do not transmit the virus to others. For comparison, SARS and MERS, both coronaviruses, had R > 3 and the 1918 influenza pandemic had R >> 3. So what determines viral spread and how can we use that information to treat and eradicate SARS-CoV-2?
In 2005, by modeling the Chinese SARS outbreak and comparing the model to the real-world data, Lloyd-Smith and co-authors were able to determine that SARS had a k of about 0.16. MERS, in 2012, was estimated to have k around 0.25; the 1918 pandemic, by contrast, had a k of 1, meaning it had very little cluster effect. The current modeling indicates that k for SARS-CoV-2 is not conclusive, but it appears higher than k for either SARS or MERS.
This work has provided insights into some of the factors influencing cluster spread, which can be controlled in a more specific way than quarantining an entire population. There will be individual variance, but we know that people are particularly infectious over a certain time period; that certain activities are more conducive to droplet formation and wider spread, and that being outdoors rather than in confined and noisy indoor locations leads to less spread. This can all lead to better, faster and more tolerable approaches to either future pandemics or to a recurrence of SARS-CoV-2.
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