Mousa, A., Winskill, P., Watson, O.J. et al. (31 more authors) (2022) Social contact patterns and implications for infectious disease transmission: a systematic review and meta-analysis of contact surveys. eLife, 10. e70294. ISSN 2050-084X
Abstract
Background: Transmission of respiratory pathogens such as SARS-CoV-2 depends on patterns of contact and mixing across populations. Understanding this is crucial to predict pathogen spread and the effectiveness of control efforts. Most analyses of contact patterns to date have focussed on high-income settings.
Methods: Here, we conduct a systematic review and individual-participant meta-analysis of surveys carried out in low- and middle-income countries and compare patterns of contact in these settings to surveys previously carried out in high-income countries. Using individual-level data from 28,503 participants and 413,069 contacts across 27 surveys we explored how contact characteristics (number, location, duration and whether physical) vary across income settings.
Results: Contact rates declined with age in high- and upper-middle-income settings, but not in low-income settings, where adults aged 65+ made similar numbers of contacts as younger individuals and mixed with all age-groups. Across all settings, increasing household size was a key determinant of contact frequency and characteristics, with low-income settings characterised by the largest, most intergenerational households. A higher proportion of contacts were made at home in low-income settings, and work/school contacts were more frequent in high-income strata. We also observed contrasting effects of gender across income-strata on the frequency, duration and type of contacts individuals made.
Conclusions: These differences in contact patterns between settings have material consequences for both spread of respiratory pathogens, as well as the effectiveness of different non-pharmaceutical interventions.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | This is an open-access article, free of all copyright, and may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, modified, built upon, or otherwise used by anyone for any lawful purpose. The work is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/). |
Keywords: | epidemiology; global health |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health (Sheffield) > School of Health and Related Research (Sheffield) > ScHARR - Sheffield Centre for Health and Related Research |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number Medical Research Council MR/P022081/1 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 29 Nov 2021 12:10 |
Last Modified: | 26 Jun 2024 08:35 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.7554/elife.70294 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:180951 |
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Filename: elife-70294-v1.pdf
Licence: Creative Commons: Public Domain Dedication