The Secondary Attack Rate of Covid-19


Covid-19 is rapidly spreading globally. A paper published yesterday in Lancet, Secondary attack rate, and super covering events for SARS-CoV-2, gave us a specific number of how fast Covid-19 can spread. SARS-CoV-2 is another name for Covid-19 and is used in science journals.

The paper was made by Yang Liu and Rosalind Eggo of the Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

They arrived at their conclusion by studying the 9 different situations where one index case or the person who is the original source of infection was able to spread it to their contacts. They counted how many were exposed and how many eventually became infected.

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Lancet Feb 27, 2020

In the study, the secondary attack rate of Covid-19 is 34%

1920px-COVID-19_Outbreak_World_Map.svg
Red means confirmed blue is suspected cases of Covid-19

What is a Secondary Attack Rate?

The secondary attack rate is the proportion of susceptible people who get an infection after they are exposed to it. It only applies to person-to-person transmission. It will vary depending on the context (closeness and type of contact), as well as the disease.

As an example, if someone who has Covid-19 comes into close contact with 100 people with enough time, 34 will be infected with the virus.

Another example will be if 15 people were close to a Covid-19 carrier, then 5 of them will be infected.

Anyone who gets the Covid-19 can then spread it to another 34% of their close contacts. That will start a chain reaction.

Long incubation period means more time to spread the virus

With an incubation period of 14 days, carriers will have plenty of time to spread the virus to their homes, workplaces, places of worship, restaurants, bars, concert arenas, or coliseums.

It is not surprising why governments are closing schools, canceling concerts and sports events, and limiting transportation.

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Image credit: Covid-19 map from Wikimedia Original author: Pharexia