PNAS: How did the COVID-19 super-transmitter come about?

FEBRUARY 11, 2021 /--- -- Researchers at Duran University, Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Massachusetts General Hospital have learned that obesity, age and the tendency to contract COVID-19 infection are linked, their findings report in the journal PNAS.
using observational studies of 194 healthy people and experimental studies of COVID-19 infection in non-human primates, the researchers found that aerosol particles exhaled from subjects varied widely.
in the study group, older people with higher body mass index (BMI) and increased COVID-19 infections were three times more likely to exhale respiratory droplets than others.
(Photo: www.pixabay.com) researchers found that 18 percent of human subjects accounted for 80 percent of the exhaled particles in this group, reflecting that the distribution of exhaled aerosol particles followed the 20/80 rule in other infectious disease epidemics, meaning that 20 percent of infected individuals accounted for 80 percent of transmissions.
as infection with COVID-19 progresses, aerosol droplets in non-human primates increase, peaking one week after infection and then returning to normal two weeks later.
note that as COVID-19 infections progress, virus particles become smaller, reaching the size of a single micron at the peak of infection.
when people breathe, talk or cough, tiny particles are more likely to be excreted.
they can also stay floating longer, spread farther through the air, and get deeper into the lungs when inhaled.
Dr. Chad Roy, author of the communication at the National Primate Research Center in Durham and director of infectious disease air biology, said the incidence of exhaled aerosols increased even in asymptomatic COVID-19 cases.
in the acute infection phase, there is a similar increase in droplets compared to other infectious diseases such as tuberculosis, " said Roy.
infections in the respiratory tract appear to weaken mucus, thus promoting the movement of infectious particles into the environment.
Though our results suggest that young and healthy people produce far fewer droplets than young people and people in poor health, they also show that any one of us who is infected with COVID-19 may produce large numbers of respiratory droplets."
(Bioon.com) Source: Researchers unravel what makes someone a COVID-19 superspreader Original source: David A. Edwards et al, Exhaled aerosol increases with COVID-19 application, age, obesity, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2021). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2021830118