Scientists have been able to prove that super spreaders contribute significantly to the spread of Covid-19 by triggering a chain reaction - often unconsciously.
Most Covid-19 infections occur in private households.
But the virus carrier can usually be found outside of your own four walls.
So-called superspreading events promote the continuation of the pandemic.
This can be a birthday party or a choir rehearsal: An infected person can infect many people with Covid-19 during the meeting.
The tricky thing about it: People can also transmit coronaviruses if they don't show any symptoms themselves.
A small number of people can therefore be responsible for many infections.
US researchers have now found: This is how many people on average get infected with Covid-19 from superspreaders
.
The most common route of transmission of coronaviruses is droplet infection: infected people breathe or cough out contaminated respiratory droplets, which spread quickly, especially in closed rooms.
However, there are still many questions about Corona that have not yet been finally clarified: For example, where do most people become infected with the virus.
In a current evaluation, researchers come to the conclusion that the following three factors are the main drivers of the pandemic *:
Contagion in one's own household
tourist and professional trips
Contact with superspreaders
The latter is likely to play a key role, as US researchers have discovered.
In a study, they
evaluated
60 scientifically documented
superspreader events
and were able to track how many people were infected with Covid-19 through them
.
The researchers defined events in which one person infected more than six people with Covid-19 as a superspreader event.
Poll on the subject
Superspreaders infect an average of 20 people - small group meetings as a solution?
In the case of the 60 events examined, between ten and 55 people were infected by one person: for example, six at a family reunion in Singapore and 187 in an apartment complex in Hong Kong.
On average, someone infected with the virus infected 20 other people,
as Felix Wong and James Collins from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) found in their study.
The researchers also come to the conclusion: Limiting gatherings to ten or fewer people can significantly reduce superspreader events - and also the overall number of infections - as quoted by Business Insider.
(jg) * Merkur.de belongs to the Germany-wide Ippen-Digital editorial network
.
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