Veronica Kumari
Super-spreaders are those individuals or organisms infected with a contagious disease who transmit the disease to a person they come in contact with, intentionally or unintentionally. Studies on infectious disease epidemiology suggest that some individuals exhibit a higher ability to infect others. A well-known rule called as 20/80 rule where it is believed that 20% of the individuals within a population contribute at least 80% to the potential transmission of a pathogen.
Based on the studies, It is found that a small percentage of individuals within a given population control most of the transmission events. Such infected individuals can infect a large population as compared to others. Studies conducted on pandemics such as Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) unveiled that, during the absence of super-spreading events, most individuals infect few other individuals or organisms. However, super-spreading events are governed by different factors, such as co-infection, immune-suppression, delayed hospital admission, misdiagnosis, and inter-hospital transfers. Identifying super-spreaders plays a critical role in preparing for a pandemic and infectious disease management. To track super-spreaders and the infectious diseases, scientists generally use the basic reproduction number — also known as R0 or “R nought” or R Zero which tells about the average number of susceptible people, that each sick person will infect.
One of the classy examples goes way back to the year 1900, Mary Mallon, also known as Typhoid Mary. She was identified as an asymptomatic carrier of the pathogen that caused Typhoid fever. Super-spreaders in context to the current pandemic, Baldev Singh and patient-31 are few examples among many others.