A medical conference at the start of the pandemic may be linked to as many as 300,000 coronavirus cases across the country.
While 175 people attended the two-day Biogen medical conference in Boston on February 26 and 27, contract tracing initially discovered 100 cases of COVID tied to the event, reported CBS News.
But according to a new study published in the journal Science, scientists estimate the event led to the spread of the virus across 29 states, Australia, Slovakia and Sweden, per the AP.
The study estimates between 205,000 and 300,000 coronavirus cases across the U.S. can be linked to the superspreader event.
To come up with their findings, scientists tracked the unique genetic code of the novel virus linked to the Boston medical conference.
"Genome data reveal that the impact of the conference was far larger than the approximately 100 cases directly associated with the event," the scientists wrote.
Using the genetic sequence, the researchers were able to determine the virus continued to spread from February until November 1st.
"It's as if some viruses have polka dots and others don't, and we follow those polka-dot viruses across time and space," the study’s lead author, Jacob Lemieux, told CBS News.
Part of the reason the virus spread so far and wide is that those who attended the medical conference "tended to be younger, healthier, and were traveling more, and we found that they went to a lot of different places,” Lemieux shared.
While the magnitude of the spread from one event may sound alarming, the scientist said these scenarios have been playing out since the start of the global outbreak.
"It's surprising to the public to realize that a single event can cause so many downstream infections," Lemieux continued. "These events have been going on since day one [of the pandemic] — the Wuhan seafood market, ski resorts in Europe, cruise ships, Mardi Gras, a wedding in Maine, the Sturgis motorcycle rally [in South Dakota]"
Lemieux warned: "The conditions that allow these super-spreading events to occur are very much still with us and will continue to be with us for a long time."
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