Transmission heterogeneities, kinetics, and controllability of SARS-CoV-2
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Abstract
A minority of people infected with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) transmit most infections. How does this happen? Sun et al. reconstructed transmission in Hunan, China, up to April 2020. Such detailed data can be used to separate out the relative contribution of transmission control measures aimed at isolating individuals relative to population-level distancing measures. The authors found that most of the secondary transmissions could be traced back to a minority of infected individuals, and well over half of transmission occurred in the presymptomatic phase. Furthermore, the duration of exposure to an infected person combined with closeness and number of household contacts constituted the greatest risks for transmission, particularly when lockdown conditions prevailed. These findings could help in the design of infection control policies that have the potential to minimize both virus transmission and economic strain.
Science , this issue p. eabe2424
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SciScore for 10.1101/2020.08.09.20171132: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
NIH rigor criteria are not applicable to paper type.Table 2: Resources
No key resources detected.
Results from OddPub: Thank you for sharing your data.
Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:Several caveats are worth noting. We could not evaluate the risk of transmission in schools, workplaces, conferences, prisons, or factories, as no contacts in these settings were reported in the Hunan dataset. Our study is likely underpowered to assess the transmission potential of asymptomatic individuals given the relatively small fraction of these infections in our data (13.5% overall and 22.1% of infections captured through contact …
SciScore for 10.1101/2020.08.09.20171132: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
NIH rigor criteria are not applicable to paper type.Table 2: Resources
No key resources detected.
Results from OddPub: Thank you for sharing your data.
Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:Several caveats are worth noting. We could not evaluate the risk of transmission in schools, workplaces, conferences, prisons, or factories, as no contacts in these settings were reported in the Hunan dataset. Our study is likely underpowered to assess the transmission potential of asymptomatic individuals given the relatively small fraction of these infections in our data (13.5% overall and 22.1% of infections captured through contact tracing). There is no statistical support for decreased transmission from asymptomatic individuals (Fig. S3A), although we observe a positive, but non-significant gradient in average transmission risk with disease severity. Evidence from viral shedding studies is conflicting; viral load appears independent of clinical severity in some studies (6, 23, 38, 48) while others suggest faster viral clearance in asymptomatic individuals (49). Another limitation relates to changes in testing practices for contacts of primary cases. Testing was initially limited to contacts exhibiting symptoms, and this condition was relaxed after February 7th. The early testing scheme may lead to underestimation of susceptibility in children, as younger individuals are less likely to develop SARS-CoV-2 symptoms (50). However, reassuringly, sensitivity analyses indicate that the age gradient of susceptibility is preserved even after stratification for changes in testing protocol, and our estimate of a lower susceptibility to infection of children (individuals aged 0-12 y...
Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.
Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.
Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.
Results from rtransparent:- Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
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- No protocol registration statement was detected.
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