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      Estimating infectiousness throughout SARS-CoV-2 infection course

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          Correlates of infectiousness

          The role that individuals with asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 have in transmission of the virus is not well understood. Jones et al. investigated viral load in patients, comparing those showing few, if any, symptoms with hospitalized cases. Approximately 400,000 individuals, mostly from Berlin, were tested from February 2020 to March 2021 and about 6% tested positive. Of the 25,381 positive subjects, about 8% showed very high viral loads. People became infectious within 2 days of infection, and in hospitalized individuals, about 4 days elapsed from the start of virus shedding to the time of peak viral load, which occurred 1 to 3 days before the onset of symptoms. Overall, viral load was highly variable, but was about 10-fold higher in persons infected with the B.1.1.7 variant. Children had slightly lower viral loads than adults, although this difference may not be clinically significant.

          Science, abi5273, this issue p. eabi5273

          Abstract

          Analysis of thousands of people who tested positive in Germany reveals that many were asymptomatic and a minority exhibited high viral loads.

          Abstract

          INTRODUCTION

          Although post facto studies have revealed the importance of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) transmission from presymptomatic, asymptomatic, and mildly symptomatic (PAMS) cases, the virological basis of their infectiousness remains largely unquantified. The reasons for the rapid spread of variant lineages of concern, such as B.1.1.7, have yet to be fully determined.

          RATIONALE

          Viral load (viral RNA concentration) in patient samples and the rate of isolation success of virus from clinical specimens in cell culture are the clinical parameters most directly relevant to infectiousness and hence to transmission. To increase our understanding of the infectiousness of SARS-CoV-2, especially in PAMS cases and those infected with the B.1.1.7 variant, we analyzed viral load data from 25,381 German cases, including 9519 hospitalized patients, 6110 PAMS cases from walk-in test centers, 1533 B.1.1.7 variant infections, and the viral load time series of 4434 (mainly hospitalized) patients. Viral load results were then combined with estimated cell culture isolation probabilities, producing a clinical proxy estimate of infectiousness.

          RESULTS

          PAMS subjects had, at the first positive test, viral loads and estimated infectiousness only slightly less than hospitalized patients. Similarly, children were found to have mean viral loads only slightly lower (0.5 log 10 units or less) than those of adults and ~78% of the adult peak cell culture isolation probability. Eight percent of first-positive viral loads were 10 9 copies per swab or higher, across a wide age range (mean 37.6 years, standard deviation 13.4 years), representing a likely highly infectious minority, one-third of whom were PAMS. Relative to non-B.1.1.7 cases, patients with the B.1.1.7 variant had viral loads that were higher by a factor of 10 and estimated cell culture infectivity that was higher by a factor of 2.6. Similar ranges of viral loads from B.1.1.7 and B.1.177 samples were shown to be capable of causing infection in Caco-2 cell culture. A time-course analysis estimates that a peak viral load of 10 8.1 copies per swab is reached 4.3 days after onset of shedding and shows that, across the course of infection, hospitalized patients have slightly higher viral loads than nonhospitalized cases, who in turn have viral loads slightly higher than PAMS cases. Higher viral loads are observed in first-positive tests of PAMS subjects, likely as a result of systematic earlier testing. Mean culture isolation probability declines to 0.5 at 5 days after peak viral load and to 0.3 at 10 days after peak viral load. We estimate a rate of viral load decline of 0.17 log 10 units per day, which, combined with reported estimates of incubation time and time to loss of successful cell culture isolation, suggests that viral load peaks 1 to 3 days before onset of symptoms (in symptomatic cases).

          CONCLUSION

          PAMS subjects who test positive at walk-in test centers can be expected to be approximately as infectious as hospitalized patients. The level of expected infectious viral shedding of PAMS people is of high importance because they are circulating in the community at the time of detection of infection. Although viral load and cell culture infectivity cannot be translated directly to transmission probability, it is likely that the rapid spread of the B.1.1.7 variant is partly attributable to higher viral load in these cases. Easily measured virological parameters can be used, for example, to estimate transmission risk from different groups (by age, gender, clinical status, etc.), to quantify variance, to show differences in virus variants, to highlight and quantify overdispersion, and to inform quarantine, containment, and elimination strategies.

          Viral load and cell culture infectivity in 25,381 SARS-CoV-2 infections.

          ( A) Viral loads in presymptomatic, asymptomatic, and mildly symptomatic cases (PAMS; red), hospitalized patients (blue), and other subjects (black). ( B) Expected first-positive viral load and cell culture isolation probability, colored as in (A). ( C) Temporal estimation with lines representing patients, colored as in (A). ( D) As in (C), but colored by age.

          Abstract

          Two elementary parameters for quantifying viral infection and shedding are viral load and whether samples yield a replicating virus isolate in cell culture. We examined 25,381 cases of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) in Germany, including 6110 from test centers attended by presymptomatic, asymptomatic, and mildly symptomatic (PAMS) subjects, 9519 who were hospitalized, and 1533 B.1.1.7 lineage infections. The viral load of the youngest subjects was lower than that of the older subjects by 0.5 (or fewer) log 10 units, and they displayed an estimated ~78% of the peak cell culture replication probability; in part this was due to smaller swab sizes and unlikely to be clinically relevant. Viral loads above 10 9 copies per swab were found in 8% of subjects, one-third of whom were PAMS, with a mean age of 37.6 years. We estimate 4.3 days from onset of shedding to peak viral load (10 8.1 RNA copies per swab) and peak cell culture isolation probability (0.75). B.1.1.7 subjects had mean log 10 viral load 1.05 higher than that of non-B.1.1.7 subjects, and the estimated cell culture replication probability of B.1.1.7 subjects was higher by a factor of 2.6.

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          Most cited references88

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          Fast gapped-read alignment with Bowtie 2.

          As the rate of sequencing increases, greater throughput is demanded from read aligners. The full-text minute index is often used to make alignment very fast and memory-efficient, but the approach is ill-suited to finding longer, gapped alignments. Bowtie 2 combines the strengths of the full-text minute index with the flexibility and speed of hardware-accelerated dynamic programming algorithms to achieve a combination of high speed, sensitivity and accuracy.
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            • Record: found
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            MAFFT Multiple Sequence Alignment Software Version 7: Improvements in Performance and Usability

            We report a major update of the MAFFT multiple sequence alignment program. This version has several new features, including options for adding unaligned sequences into an existing alignment, adjustment of direction in nucleotide alignment, constrained alignment and parallel processing, which were implemented after the previous major update. This report shows actual examples to explain how these features work, alone and in combination. Some examples incorrectly aligned by MAFFT are also shown to clarify its limitations. We discuss how to avoid misalignments, and our ongoing efforts to overcome such limitations.
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              Early Transmission Dynamics in Wuhan, China, of Novel Coronavirus–Infected Pneumonia

              Abstract Background The initial cases of novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV)–infected pneumonia (NCIP) occurred in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China, in December 2019 and January 2020. We analyzed data on the first 425 confirmed cases in Wuhan to determine the epidemiologic characteristics of NCIP. Methods We collected information on demographic characteristics, exposure history, and illness timelines of laboratory-confirmed cases of NCIP that had been reported by January 22, 2020. We described characteristics of the cases and estimated the key epidemiologic time-delay distributions. In the early period of exponential growth, we estimated the epidemic doubling time and the basic reproductive number. Results Among the first 425 patients with confirmed NCIP, the median age was 59 years and 56% were male. The majority of cases (55%) with onset before January 1, 2020, were linked to the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, as compared with 8.6% of the subsequent cases. The mean incubation period was 5.2 days (95% confidence interval [CI], 4.1 to 7.0), with the 95th percentile of the distribution at 12.5 days. In its early stages, the epidemic doubled in size every 7.4 days. With a mean serial interval of 7.5 days (95% CI, 5.3 to 19), the basic reproductive number was estimated to be 2.2 (95% CI, 1.4 to 3.9). Conclusions On the basis of this information, there is evidence that human-to-human transmission has occurred among close contacts since the middle of December 2019. Considerable efforts to reduce transmission will be required to control outbreaks if similar dynamics apply elsewhere. Measures to prevent or reduce transmission should be implemented in populations at risk. (Funded by the Ministry of Science and Technology of China and others.)
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                Author and article information

                Journal
                Science
                Science
                science
                science
                Science (New York, N.y.)
                American Association for the Advancement of Science
                0036-8075
                1095-9203
                09 July 2021
                25 May 2021
                25 May 2021
                : 373
                : 6551
                : eabi5273
                Affiliations
                [1 ]Institute of Virology, Charité­–Universitätsmedizin Berlin, corporate member of Freie Universität Berlin, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and Berlin Institute of Health, 10117 Berlin, Germany.
                [2 ]German Centre for Infection Research (DZIF), partner site Charité, 10117 Berlin, Germany.
                [3 ]Centre for Pathogen Evolution, Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 3EJ, U.K.
                [4 ]Norwegian Institute of Public Health, 0473 Oslo, Norway.
                [5 ]University of Oslo, 0315 Oslo, Norway.
                [6 ]Department of Infectious Diseases and Respiratory Medicine, Charité–Universitätsmedizin Berlin, corporate member of Freie Universität Berlin and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 10117 Berlin, Germany.
                [7 ]Department of Tropical Medicine, Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine, and Department of Medicine I, University Medical Centre Hamburg-Eppendorf, 20359 Hamburg, Germany.
                [8 ]Labor Berlin–Charité Vivantes GmbH, Sylter Straße 2, 13353 Berlin, Germany.
                [9 ]Institute for Infection Medicine, Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel and University Medical Center Schleswig-Holstein, Campus Kiel, 24105 Kiel, Germany.
                [10 ]Labor Dr. Krause und Kollegen MVZ GmbH, 24106 Kiel, Germany.
                Author notes
                [ * ]Corresponding author. Email: christian.drosten@ 123456charite.de
                [ † ]

                These authors contributed equally to this work.

                Author information
                https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1120-9531
                https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4225-9024
                https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5314-8530
                https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0484-6332
                https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0494-1022
                https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0476-9947
                https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3807-473X
                https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4964-0685
                https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8934-8788
                https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3786-8033
                https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8919-3416
                https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3605-0136
                https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7923-0519
                Article
                abi5273
                10.1126/science.abi5273
                9267347
                34035154
                42bb45b4-2f48-4626-9bea-70e1ff10a165
                Copyright © 2021 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works

                This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

                History
                : 15 March 2021
                : 21 May 2021
                Funding
                Funded by: FundRef http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100000060, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases;
                Award ID: HHSN272201400008C
                Funded by: FundRef http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100009139, Deutsches Zentrum für Infektionsforschung;
                Award ID: 301-4-7-01.703
                Funded by: FundRef http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100002347, Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung;
                Award ID: 01KI2021
                Funded by: FundRef http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100002347, Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung;
                Award ID: 01KX2021
                Funded by: FundRef http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100002347, Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung;
                Award ID: FKZ 01KI20160C
                Funded by: FundRef http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100017268, Berlin Institute of Health;
                Award ID: COVID 19 S
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                Jeff Cook
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