system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
I have heard/read from a few sources that viral load is one of the factors influencing severity of the infection in Covid-19. How far is this true?

For example, if person A gets a higher viral dose than person B, is his/her infection more likely to be more severe and has there been any research/studies conducted on this? Also, I'd like to know if there's a minimum viral dose that is needed for symptomatic infection, and if this dose varies from individual to individual. The new (mutated) strains of Covid-19 are said to be more infectious- does this imply that a smaller viral dose is required to cause symptomatic infection?
gpt
In general, there is a positive correlation between initial inoculate and disease severity that has been shown for several viruses including this one. This at the population level, at the individual level it can be that 2 get infected by a similar inoculate but one does worse than the other etc.