“Superspreaders” identified as driving cause of 2014 Ebola epidemic

A new study has shown that in the catastrophic 2014-2015 Ebola epidemic in West Africa, about three percent of the people infected were responsible for infecting 61 percent of all cases. The issue of so-called “superspreaders,” according to researchers who published their findings in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is so significant that it’s important to put a better face on just who these people are and then better reach them with public health measures designed to control the spread of infectious disease during epidemics.