A study of people who were intentionally infected with SARS-CoV-2 has provided a wealth of insights into viral transmission
The results highlight how widely and unpredictably disease severity and contagiousness vary between people. “And it’s that variability among humans that has made this virus so difficult to control,” says infectious-disease doctor Monica Gandhi at the University of California, San Francisco, who was not involved in the work.
The symptoms and severity of naturally acquired COVID-19 might vary depending on transmission route, viral strain and how much virus a person was exposed to. But in the challenge study, “we know that that was all controlled”, says infectious-disease researcher Anika Singanayagam at Imperial College London, a co-author of the paper.
Of the 18 participants who developed infections, 2 shed 86% of the airborne virus detected over the course of the entire study — even though both had only mild symptoms. Previous researchhas provided evidence for the existence of superspreaders who infect large numbers of people.
By the time they tested positive, most participants had already experienced mild symptoms, such as tiredness or muscle aches. That means that if people test as soon as they detect symptoms, rapid tests “can be a powerful tool” for controlling viral spread, says infectious-disease researcher Christopher Brooke at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.Some researchers question the relevance of the study’s results to today’s world.
Despite these limitations, the work “still gives us really useful information”, Singanayagam says, adding that the results are in line with what she and her colleagues have observed with naturally acquired infections. The team plans to perform similar challenge studies with more-recent variants.
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