A small percentage of COVID-19 infected people have beenresponsible for large scale spread of the disease in the country.
A study of more than a half-million people in India who wereexposed suggests that the virus¡¯ continuedspread is driven by only a small percentage of those who become infected.
Researchers have zeroed in on a small group of about 8 per cent of COVID-19 patients who are understood to have led to about 60 per cent new COVID-19 cases.
A ¡°super spreader¡± is a generic term that means someone will disproportionately infect a large number of people with a virus. In other words, super spreaders spread a virus more efficiently than the average person.
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The study also found that most cases of coronavirus infections and resultant deaths were found in the 40-69 year age group.
The researchers, including those from the Government of Tamil Nadu, and Andhra Pradesh, found that over 70 per cent of COVID-19 infected patients in the country did not infect any of their contacts.?
The study, ¡®Epidemiology and transmission dynamics of COVID-19 in two Indian states¡¯, published in Science, also found that the median hospital stay before death due to the COVID-19 in the two states was around five days, compared to 13 days in the United States.??
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The researchers found that the chances of a person with coronavirus, regardless of their age, passing it on to a close contact ranged from 2.6 per cent in the community to 9 per cent in the household.??
Children and young adults¡ªwho made up one-third of COVID cases¡ªplayed a big part in transmitting the virus in the studied populations.
¡°Kids are very efficient transmitters in this setting, which is something that hasn¡¯t been firmly established in previous studies,¡± Laxminarayan said. ¡°We found that reported cases and deaths have been more concentrated in younger cohorts than we expected based on observations in higher-income countries.¡±
Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu are among the Indian states with the largest healthcare workforce and public health expenditures per capita, and are known for their effective primary healthcare delivery models, the study noted.?
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It said 63 per cent of those who died had at least one co-morbidity, and 36 per cent had two or more underlying health conditions that made them more susceptible to the disease.About 45 per cent of those who died were diabetic, the scientists said.
The findings provide extensive insight into the spread and deadliness of COVID-19 in countries such as India ¡ª?which has experienced more than 96,000 deaths from the disease ¡ª?that have a high incidence of resource-limited populations, the researchers reported.? ??
All Inputs PTI?