Infectious viral load in unvaccinated and vaccinated individuals infected with ancestral, Delta or Omicron SARS-CoV-2

low between fully vaccinated and unvaccinated Delta-infected patients, indicating that factors other than mucosal neutralizing antibodies may be important for the reduction in infectious VL > Within 5 DPOS, we found higher RNA VLs but lower infectious VLs in swabs of unvaccinated patients with pre-VOC infections compared to Delta. These results disagree with other studies that analyzed only nucleic acid detection and found 3–10-fold-higher RNA copy number in Delta-infected patients compared to pre-VOC-infected patients > Although VL is a key element of transmission, the process of human-to-human transmission is complex, and other factors, such as varying recommended protection measures, overall incidence, perceived risks and the context of contacts (household versus community transmission), can influence outcomes in the studies reported. The best point from this article is the following: > Transmission dynamics are complex, but the interventions we can take to protect ourselves are comparatively simple.

for finding true infectious shedding -- and that vaccinated individuals can be much better in this regard despite having higher loads. e.g. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-022-01816-0 > 3. Since December at least, boosted and vaxxed have higher RATE per 100k of covid infections. This is absolutely and completely untrue. There's been a couple of times where the vaxxed have been higher in the data series, but the overwhelming trend in the data has been the opposite. e.g. right now in Santa Clara County, where I am, the unvaccinated case rate is approximately 268 per 100,000 per week; the fully vaccinated case rate is about 46 per 100,000. Of course, people who elect vaccination don't behave exactly the same as those who don't... and so many people in S.C.C. are vaccinated that the exact number of unvaccinated has some uncertainty (but it's not off by a factor of 5).