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Biogen ‘superspreader’ conference likely led to ‘tens of thousands’ of COVID infections, report says
Gov. Charlie Baker said outbreak speaks to the power of COVID-19.
A stunning new report shows the February Biogen conference likely led to “tens of thousands” of coronavirus infections — making its way to homeless shelters and foreign countries — an event even Gov. Charlie Baker said speaks to the power of COVID-19.
“I was criticized, actually, for saying a few months ago that the Biogen event was a seminal event with respect to corona here in the Commonwealth,” Baker said at a Tuesday press conference.
“I do think it speaks to the power of that virus to move from one person to another to another,” Baker said.
The report published Tuesday by the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT uses genetic fingerprints of COVID-19 to reconstruct events involved in an outbreak due to the unique sequencing errors that happen during virus replication.
The characteristic genome from the conference, called “C2416T” was later found in places such as Virginia, North Carolina, Texas, Australia, Sweden and Slovakia, according to the report, which has yet to be peer reviewed.
“I think that any way you look at it, within Massachusetts, within the U.S., abroad, it’s likely the impact of this event is measured in the tens of thousands of individuals,” said Dr. Jacob Limeaux, lead author of the study and infectious disease physician at Massachusetts General Hospital.
The Biogen conference gathered 175 attendees, at least 100 of which were infected with coronavirus, fueling the Massachusetts outbreak and being dubbed a “superspreading” event, defined in the paper as transmission of at least eight secondary infections from a single source.
The genome from the conference comprised nearly 3% of domestic and 1.7% of global coronavirus genomes collected via the GISAID global science initiative through June 28.
Researchers sequenced 722 genomes from the region and the data set includes nearly all confirmed early cases of the epidemic in Massachusetts through March 8.
A third of the genome sequences used in the study matched the sequence from the conference, according to the report, which never names Biogen specifically.
“This was a time when there wasn’t an awareness of the role of physical distancing and the role of masking,” Limeaux said.
He said in addition to the lack of awareness, the event happened early on in the pandemic when spread is exponential and attendees were very mobile, leading to increased transmission.
Limeaux said, “If it hadn’t been this conference, it would have been a different event.”
The genome from the conference was also found in 55% of infected staff and guests of the Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program, leaving researchers wondering how the connection was made.
Dr. Matthew Fox, an epidemiology professor at Boston University, said superspreading events could continue to happen, but perhaps not on the same scale, “If you look at the way cases took off in the Sun Belt well after we were already past the height of things, it’s certainly possible we could have these types of events.”
Dr. David Hamer, professor of global health and medicine at BU, highlighted a recent superspreader event at a wedding in Maine during which more than 50 people were infected, “I think there are a number of events that have happened and are at risk for having happened.”
Biogen said in a statement, “February 2020 was nearly a half-year ago, and was a period when general knowledge about the coronavirus was limited. We were adhering closely to the prevailing official guidelines. We never would have knowingly put anyone at risk.”
https://www.bostonherald.com/2020/08/25/biogen-superspreader-conference-likely-led-to-tens-of-thousands-of-covid-infections-report-says/