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Scientists studying Covid-19 ‘super-spreaders’ – the ones that transmit SARS-CoV-2 at a rate about four times the average – have discovered additional features that provide patients with this grim. “ superpower ”.
Researchers at Tulane University, Harvard, MIT, and Massachusetts General Hospital have identified a perfect storm of obesity, age and more severe Covid-19 infection that can combine and cause people to breathe out many more virus-laden respiratory droplets than normal.
Their results, which were published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, were based on a review of data from an observational study of 194 healthy people and an experimental study in primates infected with Covid-19. .
Older study subjects with a higher body mass index and more severe Covid-19 infection exhaled up to four times the number of respiratory droplets than others.
In startling figures that once again reinforce the Pareto principle (for many results, around 80% of consequences come from just 20% of causes), the researchers found that only 18% of participants produced 80% of the particles. expired in human study. group. In other words, one-fifth of those infected are responsible for four-fifths of all transmissions.
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Within the non-human group, researchers found that the droplet diameter decreased to just one micron as the disease progressed, allowing more particles to be expelled, to float longer in the air, and to travel further, again greatly increasing the possibility of transmission to others in the vicinity. The increase in exhaled aerosol droplets was also observed in asymptomatic cases.
“We saw a similar increase in droplets during the acute infection phase with other infectious diseases like tuberculosis,” said Chad Roy, Ph.D., corresponding study author and director of aerobiology of infectious diseases at the Tulane National Primate Research Center.
“It seems likely that viral and bacterial respiratory tract infections can weaken the mucus in the respiratory tract, which promotes the movement of infectious particles in this environment.”
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