Characterizing US contact patterns relevant to respiratory transmission from a pandemic to baseline: Analysis of a large cross-sectional survey.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Contact plays a critical role in infectious disease transmission. Characterizing heterogeneity in contact patterns across individuals, time, and space is necessary to inform accurate estimates of transmission risk, particularly to explain superspreading, predict age differences in vulnerability, and inform social distancing policies. Current respiratory disease models often rely on data from the 2008 POLYMOD study conducted in Europe, which is now outdated and potentially unrepresentative of behavior in the US. We seek to understand the variation in contact patterns across time, spatial scales, and demographic and social classifications, and what social behavior looks like at baseline in the absence of an ongoing pandemic.

Methods

We analyze spatiotemporal non-hou

SUBMITTER: Taube JC 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11071567 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature