What is a super-spreader? Thanks for asking! 

While summer 2020 draws to an end, the COVID-19 pandemic is far from being over. Some European countries are seeing increased infection rates and have reinforced public health measures in anticipation of a second wave. A recent Scottish study suggested that just 10% of those infected could be responsible for 80% of infections. The term super-spreaders has emerged to describe those who spread the virus to a greater number of people than the R0 reproduction rate.

So are these 10% to blame for everyone else getting contaminated?

It’s not quite that simple. Everything is linked to that R0 rate; the average number of people we infect when we have a contagious disease. Of course if the R0 rate was three, not every single person would have the same level of infectivity - it’s just an average. Some would infect many more than three, and others none at all. So there are other important indicators to take into account. Firstly you’ve got the dispersion factor, which is represented by the K value. This sheds light on how the transmission rate varies. As Dr Adam Kucharski recently told The Guardian: “The general rule is that the smaller the K value is, the more transmission comes from a smaller number of infectious people.” The latest studies suggest that the K value for COVID-19 is between 0.1 and 0.5, which seems to back up the idea that super-spreaders are generating the majority of transmissions. 

Who are these super-spreaders then? It sounds like children do in fact spread COVID-19 after all? In under 3 minutes, we answer your questions!

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