High individual-level variability in SARS-CoV-2 shedding may explain superspreading
Researchers in the United States have provided a high-resolution description of the viral dynamics involved in acute infection with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) – the agent that causes coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).
The team’s daily longitudinal sampling of 60 newly infected individuals revealed that significant person-to-person variation in the shedding of infectious virus contributes to superspreading.
Superspreading is the term used to describe a small fraction of infected individuals accounting for a disproportionate level of community transmission.
“These results provide the first high-resolution, multi-parameter empirical profile of acute SARS-CoV-2 infection in humans and implicate person-to-person variation in infectious virus shedding in driving patterns of epidemiological spread of the pandemic,” writes Christopher Brooke from the University
Superspreader events trigger emergence of novel SARS-CoV-2 variants in USA
A team of scientists from the USA and Germany has recently studied the evolution of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) in a representative set of sequences from the USA collected between 2020 and 2021. The findings reveal that the viral genome has accumulated multiple mutations over time with only occasional loss of mutation. The main driving forces behind such genetic variations include widespread infection and superspreader events. The study is currently available on the
Background
Within one year of its emergence, SARS-CoV-2, the causative pathogen of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), has infected 110 million people and claimed 2.4 million lives globally. SARS-CoV-2 is a single-stranded, positive-sense, enveloped virus of the