Young Superspreaders?

The Princeton Environmental Institute (involving the Johns Hopkins University and University of California Berkeley) have published a very large study on Covid-19 transmission. The study involved circa 500,000 people in India, notably in the states of Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh. It strongly suggested that transmission of the viral infection was driven by a relatively small percentage of those with the virus (https://www.princeton.edu/news/2020/09/30/largest-covid-19-contact-tracing-study-date-finds-children-key-spread-evidence). The 'superspreaders' were largely children and young adults, who tended to transmit the virus in their extended households. The households, in this part of India, are probably rather different to the majority of homes in the US and Europe but the findings may have relevance to two areas here. Most obviously, they provide information of the risks associated with the reopenning of schools. If young people are serious spreaders of the virus, that will increase risk to the families they return to each evening, as well as the adults who work in schools. The second area where this finding has implications,is the observation, in the UK, that families whose ethnic origins are in South Asia are particularly at risk of Covid-19 infections. Perhaps it largely comes down to how families are organised and how they interact (rather than genetic factors)?