Superspreading of SARS-CoV-2 in the USA #MMPMID33765004
Pozderac C; Skinner B
PLoS One 2021[]; 16 (3): e0248808 PMID33765004show ga
A number of epidemics, including the SARS-CoV-1 epidemic of 2002-2004, have been known to exhibit superspreading, in which a small fraction of infected individuals is responsible for the majority of new infections. The existence of superspreading implies a fat-tailed distribution of infectiousness (new secondary infections caused per day) among different individuals. Here, we present a simple method to estimate the variation in infectiousness by examining the variation in early-time growth rates of new cases among different subpopulations. We use this method to estimate the mean and variance in the infectiousness, beta, for SARS-CoV-2 transmission during the early stages of the pandemic within the United States. We find that sigmabeta/mubeta greater, similar 3.2, where mubeta is the mean infectiousness and sigmabeta its standard deviation, which implies pervasive superspreading. This result allows us to estimate that in the early stages of the pandemic in the USA, over 81% of new cases were a result of the top 10% of most infectious individuals.
free
free
free
PLoS+One 2021 ; 16 (3): e0248808
