Improving Estimates of Social Contact Patterns for Airborne Transmission of Respiratory Pathogens.
Emerg Infect Dis
; 28(10): 2016-2026, 2022 Oct.
Article
in English
| MEDLINE | ID: covidwho-2103284
ABSTRACT
Data on social contact patterns are widely used to parameterize age-mixing matrices in mathematical models of infectious diseases. Most studies focus on close contacts only (i.e., persons spoken with face-to-face). This focus may be appropriate for studies of droplet and short-range aerosol transmission but neglects casual or shared air contacts, who may be at risk from airborne transmission. Using data from 2 provinces in South Africa, we estimated age mixing patterns relevant for droplet transmission, nonsaturating airborne transmission, and Mycobacterium tuberculosis transmission, an airborne infection where saturation of household contacts occurs. Estimated contact patterns by age did not vary greatly between the infection types, indicating that widespread use of close contact data may not be resulting in major inaccuracies. However, contact in persons >50 years of age was lower when we considered casual contacts, and therefore the contribution of older age groups to airborne transmission may be overestimated.
Keywords
Full text:
Available
Collection:
International databases
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Respiratory Aerosols and Droplets
/
Mycobacterium tuberculosis
Type of study:
Experimental Studies
/
Observational study
/
Prognostic study
/
Randomized controlled trials
Country/Region as subject:
Africa
Language:
English
Journal:
Emerg Infect Dis
Journal subject:
Communicable Diseases
Year:
2022
Document Type:
Article
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