Seasonal variations in social contact patterns in a rural population in north India: Implications for pandemic control.

ABSTRACT: Social contact mixing patterns are critical to model the transmission of communicable diseases, and have been employed to model disease outbreaks including COVID-19. Nonetheless, there is a paucity of studies on contact mixing in low and middle-income countries such as India. Furthermore, mathematical models of disease outbreaks do not account for the temporal nature of social contacts. We conducted a longitudinal study of social contacts in rural north India across three seasons and analysed the temporal differences in contact patterns. A contact diary survey was performed across three seasons from October 2015-16, in which participants were queried on the number, duration, and characteristics of contacts that occurred on the previous day. A total of 8,421 responses from 3,052 respondents

SUBMITTER: Nagpal S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10883557 | biostudies-literature | 2024

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature