Super-spreader is a non-scientific term, used to describe people who end up accidentally infecting significantly more people than would be expected and in this case, were talking about people infecting others with COVID-19.

A super-spreader event, then, is the circumstance in which this person spreads the virus around lots of people in one go. While you might expect a person with COVID-19 to pass it on to one or two people, in a super-spreader event they might pass it around to 10 or more.

So far, super-spreader events have occurred in a range of places including meat packing plants, prisons, nightclubs and bars basically any venue where people are in close proximity of one another, ventilation is poor and the virus gets the opportunity to spread like wildfire.

Scientists want there to be less focus on the people who act as the source of the infection (the super-spreader, you might say) and more on the circumstances the spread has happened so as not to lay blame. By shifting the focus, they say, this can help prevent situations from happening again.