How Does COVID-19 Spread Differently Than The Flu? - HuffPost

The main way COVID-19 spreads from person to person is thought to be through large respiratory droplets expelled from an infected person when they exhale, sneeze, cough, etc.

Heidi Zapata, a Yale Medicine infectious disease doctor, said influenza spreads primarily through “tiny spitballs that are generated when we talk, laugh, sneeze, cough, sing.” So a face mask — which has been shown to reduce the respiratory droplets a person expels into the surrounding air and potentially inhales — should lower your risk for the flu just as it does with COVID-19.

During the coronavirus pandemic, several COVID-19 superspreader events have been reported where an infected person transmitted the virus to others.

However, we’ll likely see more superspreader events with COVID-19 because the population has less immunity to the disease, meaning more people in any given room are likely more susceptible to contracting COVID-19 than the flu.

In recent weeks, we’ve learned that approximately 40% to 50% of people infected with COVID-19 have no symptoms yet are contagious, and could be largely responsible for spreading the virus without knowing it.

There’s also a five- to six-day pre-symptomatic period with COVID-19 during which people are thought to be highly contagious, Zapata said.

COVID-19 generally spreads to more people, with each infected person passing it to an average of 2 to 2.5 others.

In some cases, a person can spread the virus to 10 or more people; other times it’s less.

Marr noted that this isn’t due to the nature of the coronavirus itself but rather to the lack of immunity in the population ― and whether people are taking protective measures, like wearing masks, in the face of a new virus.

It’s worth noting that epidemiologists are still investigating whether some people may have some immunity to COVID-19 from previous infections with other coronaviruses that cause the common cold.