Two months ago, a choir Coronavirus outbreak happened in a valley of the state of Washington, United States. Choir practice was held in a church. Unknowingly, one of their singers happens to have undiagnosed Coronavirus. After a few days, 52 out of the 61 singers on the choir were diagnosed with the disease. Meanwhile, two others died due to the virus.
Recently, the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (US CDC) released a report explaining how this happened.
'Super-Emitter' COVID-19 patient infects 52 people through singing
The full choir consists of 122 singers from the Skagit Valley Chorale, but only 61 made it to the rehearsal. This means that eight from the group were luckily not infected by the disease.
Los Angeles Times that first reported the article said that the choir's conductor didn't know that this could happen on his team. They also practice proper distancing during practice.
"It seemed like a normal rehearsal, except that choirs are huggy places," Burdick recalled. "We were making music and trying to keep a certain distance between each other."
Though it was terrible news for the families of the patients, this incident back in March proved to scientists how the virus easily spread in no time.
Apparently, if the virus hadn't been contained within the period that the choir members have been infected, a much larger community could have caught the virus.
"If they hadn't initiated their own isolation and quarantine before we got involved, you can conceive of a situation where every one of those people would have infected another three people each," said Dr. Howard Leibrand, the Skagit County health officer. "You would have had a huge change in our viral curve based on this one episode."
What is 'super-emitter'?
Though it has been months since the incident happened, the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (US CDC) released a study involving what happened.
COVID-19 patients that are called 'super-emitters' are people that spread the virus through speaking, singing, or any verbal method. The choir practice was only held for 2.5 hours, but the impact of the disease went so big that almost all people at large got infected,
"The act of singing, itself, might have contributed to the transmission through the emission of aerosols, which is affected by the loudness of vocalization," study authors from Skagit County Public Health said in the CDC report. "Certain persons, known as super emitters, who release more aerosol particles during speech than do their peers, might have contributed to this and previously reported COVID-19 super spreading events."
It also showed how social distancing and proper wearing of face masks contribute to preventing the spread of the virus.
"This underscores the importance of physical distancing, including maintaining at least 6 feet between persons, avoiding group gatherings and crowded places, and wearing cloth face coverings in public settings where other social distancing measures are difficult to maintain during this pandemic," added on the study.
