A business convention in Boston last February would possibly have resulted in some 20,000 instances of COVID-19, after participants unknowingly spread the virus.
The event, a convention for the biotechnology company Biogen held from 26 to 27 February, brought together some two hundred foreign participants, to which some of Italy joined, where the northern regions had just closed to involve an outbreak of COVID-19.
With only 15 reported cases in the US, there are no cases reported in the US. But it’s not the first time At the time, participants reached out, shared a buffet and kissed on the cheeks, the Washington Post reported, unansiring that COVID-19 was already circulating among them. homes in Massachusetts, North Carolina, Indiana and abroad, as well as Australia, Singapore and Slovakia.
Between participants and their close contacts alone, more than 90 other people were diagnosed with COVID-19, “raising suspicions that a widespread occasion had occurred there,” according to a new study.
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The maximum rate of transmission of this exclusive convention led 54 researchers from Boston hospitals and establishments to conduct a series and analyze the strain of the virus discovered in inflamed participants and compare it to those circulating in the Boston area. They found that the COVID-19 convention was tensioned by many others in the region, as well as others as far away as Alaska, Luxembourg and Senegal.
The strain is also of the same type discovered in about a third of all COVID-19 cases sequenced in Massachusetts in mid-July, indicating that the convention led to a massive expansion of the community.
A month after the conference, more than 600 citizens and staff at one of Boston’s largest homeless shelters underwent COVID-19 screening as a protective measure. Health officials were surprised to discover that another 230 people had already been infected and the genetic sequencing of this study made us think that nearly two-thirds of the shelter’s cases were the same variety as the Biogen conference.
“Our jaws dropped,” Dr. Pardis Sabeti, a computer biologist at the Broad Institute and one of the study’s principal investigators, told The Post.
Researchers say the convention is a “perfect storm” of factors, from foreign organization to close contact between participants, to create a large-scale event.
“The fact that the virus was introduced at the convention was unlucky,” dr. Bronwyn MacInnis, a broad institute researcher who worked on the study, begins to appreciate the imminent risk of COVID at home, if she had. A week later, the occasion would probably have been cancelled.
MacInnis noted that the convention took a stand before COVID-19 control was made in the United States, before social distance was understood, and long before the masks of the Centers for Disease Control.
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Based on the presence of the virus among participants and the absence of restrictions on COVID-19 at the time, the researchers estimate that this convention led to 20,000 infections.
“It’s not a difficult estimate, but it communicates the scale,” MacInnis said. “If tens of thousands of people look good, it’s vital to think that this is opposed to the background of a pandemic that has inflamed tens of millions of other people. “
The convention and upcoming instances serve as a lesson on how COVID-19 can be temporarily propagated, the researchers said.
“We didn’t know anything better,” Jacob Lemieux, a doctor and infectious disease specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital and an examination leader, told The Post. “The difference now is that there is more and more clinical evidence to show what can happen on an occasion without marriage like this. We know better. Therefore, we will have to be informed of the lesson. “
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