What do we know about superspreader events in the pandemic?
That’s when a single person infects a large number of other people, or when a gathering is linked to a large number of cases.
There’s no rule for when a cluster of cases is big enough to be called a superspreader event. But these are not instances of spread within one household. Instead, these are large clusters of cases where infection occurs in settings such as churches, restaurants or bars.
In the United States, for instance, a choir member with symptoms attended a rehearsal in March. Of 60 others who attended, 52 got sick with COVID-19, including two who died. President Donald Trump’s Rose Garden event to announce he was nominating Amy Coney Barrett to serve on the Supreme Court turned into another superspreader event. At least a dozen people who attended the celebration tested positive for COVID-19.
To prevent superspreader events, we need to better understand them, said Anne Rimoin, an infectious diseases expert at the University of California, Los Angeles.
“Contact tracing is the way you get to the bottom of a superspreader event,” Rimoin said. “That’s how you break chains of transmission.”
>>RELATED: What is contact tracing and how does it work for COVID-19?
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Cox Media Group
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