TY - JOUR
AU - Illingworth, Christopher J.R.
AU - Hamilton, William L.
AU - Warne, Ben
AU - Routledge, Matthew
AU - Popay, Ashley
AU - Jackson, Chris
AU - Fieldman, Tom
AU - Meredith, Luke W.
AU - Houldcroft, Charlotte J.
AU - Hosmillo, Myra
AU - Jahun, Aminu S.
AU - Caller, Laura G.
AU - Caddy, Sarah L.
AU - Yakovleva, Anna
AU - Hall, Grant
AU - Khokhar, Fahad A.
AU - Feltwell, Theresa
AU - Pinckert, Malte L.
AU - Georgana, Iliana
AU - Chaudhry, Yasmin
AU - Curran, Martin D.
AU - Parmar, Surendra
AU - Sparkes, Dominic
AU - Rivett, Lucy
AU - Jones, Nick K.
AU - Sridhar, Sushmita
AU - Forrest, Sally
AU - Dymond, Tom
AU - Grainger, Kayleigh
AU - Workman, Chris
AU - Ferris, Mark
AU - Gkrania-Klotsas, Effrossyni
AU - Brown, Nicholas M.
AU - Weekes, Michael P.
AU - Baker, Stephen
AU - Peacock, Sharon J.
AU - Goodfellow, Ian G.
AU - Gouliouris, Theodore
AU - De Angelis, Daniela
AU - Török, M. Estée
PY - 2021
DA - August
TI - Superspreaders drive the largest outbreaks of hospital onset COVID-19 infections
JO - Evolutionary Biology Microbiology and Infectious Disease
DO - https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.67308
AB - SARS-CoV-2 is notable both for its rapid spread, and for the heterogeneity of its patterns of transmission, with multiple published incidences of superspreading behaviour. Here, we applied a novel network reconstruction algorithm to infer patterns of viral transmission occurring between patients and health care workers (HCWs) in the largest clusters of COVID-19 infection identified during the first wave of the epidemic at Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, UK. Based upon dates of individuals reporting symptoms, recorded individual locations, and viral genome sequence data, we show an uneven pattern of transmission between individuals, with patients being much more likely to be infected by other patients than by HCWs. Further, the data were consistent with a pattern of superspreading, whereby 21% of individuals caused 80% of transmission events. Our study provides a detailed retrospective analysis of nosocomial SARS-CoV-2 transmission, and sheds light on the need for intensive and pervasive infection control procedures.
PB - eLife Sciences Publications
UR - http://eprints.gla.ac.uk/247067/
KW - Coronavirus (COVID-19)
KW - Hospital care
ER