Key points are not available for this paper at this time.
Compared with the average transmissibility of human influenza A virus, much less attention has been paid to the potential variability in its transmissibility. We considered viral shedding as a proxy for infectiousness and explored the heterogeneity of infectiousness among patients with medically attended seasonal influenza A virus infection. The analysis revealed that viral shedding is more heterogeneous in children than in adults. The top 20% most infectious children and adults were estimated to be responsible for 89%-96% and 78%-82%, respectively, of the total infectiousness in each age group. Further investigation is required to correlate the substantial variations in viral shedding with heterogeneity in actual transmissibility.
Lau et al. (Mon,) studied this question.