COVID-19 epidemiological studies · Model or simulation

Why do a few people infect so many with COVID?

Paper: Disentangling the drivers of heterogeneity in SARS-CoV-2 transmission from data on viral load and daily contact rates
Quilty et al. · PLoS Computational Biology 2026 · doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1014715

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Why do a few people infect so many with COVID? A UK model used contact surveys and viral load data. 68% of simulated people reached high infectiousness, but contact numbers mattered more for superspreading.

AI-assisted summary with an AI voice, not reviewed by the authors. Made from the paper under its CC BY licence. Read the paper before relying on a finding. Keywords: SARS-CoV-2 transmission, superspreading, overdispersion, viral load, contact surveys, rapid testing.