The total number and mass of SARS-CoV-2 virions
Ron Sender, Yinon M. Bar‐On, Shmuel Gleizer, Biana Bernshtein, Avi I. Flamholz, Rob Phillips, Ron Milo
Abstract
Significance Knowing the absolute numbers of virions in an infection promotes better understanding of disease dynamics and response of the immune system. Here we use current knowledge on the concentrations of virions in infected individuals to estimate the total number and mass of SARS-CoV-2 virions in an infected person. Although each infected person carries an estimated 1 billion to 100 billion virions during peak infection, their total mass is no more than 0.1 mg. This curiously implies that all SARS-CoV-2 virions currently in all human hosts have a mass of between 100 g and 10 kg. Combining the known mutation rate and our estimate of the number of infectious virions, we quantify the formation rate of genetic variants.