Publication
Social Contact Patterns and Implications for Infectious Disease Transmission: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Contact Surveys
Publisher:
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Date:
16-06-2021
DOI:
10.1101/2021.06.10.21258720
Abstract: 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. Here, we conduct a systematic review and in idual-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 in idual-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. 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 in iduals and mixed with all age-groups. Across all settings, increasing household size was a key determinant of contact frequency and characteristics, but low-income settings were 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 in iduals made. 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. This work is primarily being funded by joint Centre funding from the UK Medical Research Council and DFID (MR/R015600/1).