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Wednesday, May 20, 2020

Science, 19 May 2020 - Why do some COVID-19 patients infect many others, whereas most don’t spread the virus at all?

Title:
Why do some COVID-19 patients infect many others, whereas most don’t spread the virus at all?

Author:
Kai Kupferschmidt

Published:
Science, 19 May 2020
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/05/why-do-some-covid-19-patients-infect-many-others-whereas-most-don-t-spread-virus-all

From the article:
"When 61 people met for a choir practice in a church in Mount Vernon, Washington, on 10 March, everything seemed normal. For 2.5 hours the chorists sang, snacked on cookies and oranges, and sang some more. But one of them had been suffering for 3 days from what felt like a cold—and turned out to be COVID-19. 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. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that meticulously reconstructed the tragedy.  

Many similar “superspreading events” have occurred in the COVID-19 pandemic."