SEVEN people who were exposed to Covid-19 but had neither symptoms nor were infectious may have brought the virus into the North of Ireland on March 1, 2020.
Researchers at Queen’s University Belfast suggest it took about 9.6 days for someone exposed to Covid to develop symptoms and become infectious.
They said a symptomatic patient could spread the disease for nine days.
Experts from the school of mathematics and physics used modelling to reach their conclusions.
Dr Gabor Kiss, who led the research, said the number seven was significant because while this seems a small number, the consequences demonstrate “just how infectious Covid-19 is”.
Data used in the modelling was sourced from the North’s Department of Health and predicted likely outcomes during the course of the pandemic.
Dr Kiss said one of the positives to emerge from their work was that their model could be used for any new infectious disease which might develop in the future.
“We know it [the model] worked from early on, as our predictions matched official data from the Department of Health,” he said.
“This research lays the foundation for a decision making support tool which could assess the state of an outbreak and help to advise on optimal interventions in the early phases of any re-emerging high-consequence infectious disease which is vaccine-preventable.”
Team member, PhD student Emily Jones Smith, said the things that stood out for her was the effect lockdown had on flattening the curve.
“We started to see a decline in the number of infectious patients within a couple of days into lockdown. In fact the rate of transmission decreased massively,” she said.
Based on statistics, she said that she would not be recommending removing the restrictions around masks and social distancing for some time to come.
Dr Kiss said the mathematics they were doing was a little more “abstract” but that it was “fascinating to see how those abstract ideas are working in the real world and how they can help to tackle serious problems”.
Ms Jones Smith said it was definitely more interesting “seeing their work evolve in real time”.
On Wednesday, the Department of Health reported two further deaths and 1,339 new cases in the previous 24 hours in the North.
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