Only 8% of more than 25,000 German COVID-19 patients had high viral loads, one-third of whom were presymptomatic, asymptomatic, or mildly symptomatic, according to a study published yesterday in Science.
High viral loads suggest greater infectiousness.Led by researchers from the Charite-Universitatsmedizin Berlin, the study involved measuring SARS-CoV-2 viral loads and estimating probability of virus cell culture isolation in 25,381 coronavirus patients, 24% of whom were identified at testing facilities, 38% of whom were hospitalized, and 6% of whom were infected with the B117 variant first seen in the United Kingdom.Viral load is the total number of copies of the SARS-CoV-2 genome in a patient sample, usually given as particles per