For the study, researchers developed a mathematical model to test different outbreak scenarios. The model indicated that even small, short outbreaks were extended and expanded when sexual transmission was a factor.
“Whenever we had die-outs of the directly transmitted infectious individuals, which would otherwise have spelled the end of the outbreak, we had reignition from the sexually infectious individuals transmitting the virus to the susceptible people left in the population, who then served as a source of direct transmission,” said the study’s lead author John Vinson, a doctoral student in the Odum School of Ecology at the University of Georgia in Athens. “There’s an increasing awareness that sexual transmission can happen…but there’s been very little written about how it works or what it means for the metrics [of disease transmission] that the public health community uses.”
More articles on infection control:
Clinical practice guidelines for C. diff prevention — 8 things to know
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