ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: During the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic, a minority of index cases are associated with a majority of secondary cases suggesting that superspreaders could drive the pandemic. We identified a phenotype in individuals with extremely high viral load who could act as superspreaders. METHODS: Data were analyzed from individuals tested for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) from 18 March through 15 August 2020. Outcomes were compared using contingency table and quantile regression to test the equality of medians between the pandemic waves and by viral load groups. RESULTS: Of the 11 564 samples tested, 1319 (11.4%) were positive for SARS-CoV-2. An increase in weekly median viral load occurred in the second wave of the SARS-CoV2 pandemic. This population was more likely to be women, outpatients, and symptomatic and to have an extremely high or high viral load. In patients with multiple reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction-positive test results, the durations of viral shedding were comparable between individuals with asymptomatic/mild and mild/moderate illness severity. CONCLUSIONS: We detected a small group of individuals with extremely high SARS-CoV-2 viral loads and mild illness. We believe that these individuals' characteristics could be consistent with the superspreader phenomenon and that greater awareness of the social dynamics of these individuals is needed to understand the spread of SARS-CoV-2.
Subject(s)
COVID-19/epidemiology , COVID-19/virology , Phenotype , SARS-CoV-2 , Viral Load/trends , Adolescent , Adult , Aged , Aged, 80 and over , COVID-19/diagnosis , COVID-19 Nucleic Acid Testing , Female , Humans , Male , Middle Aged , RNA, Viral/isolation & purification , Texas/epidemiology , Virus Shedding , Young AdultABSTRACT
As of February 2020, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) outbreak started in China in December 2019 has been spreading in many countries in the world. With the numbers of confirmed cases are increasing, information on the epidemiologic investigation and clinical manifestation have been accumulated. However, data on viral load kinetics in confirmed cases are lacking. Here, we present the viral load kinetics of the first two confirmed patients with mild to moderate illnesses in Korea in whom distinct viral load kinetics are shown. This report suggests that viral load kinetics of SARS-CoV-2 may be different from that of previously reported other coronavirus infections such as SARS-CoV.