Reactive school closure weakens the network of social interactions and reduces the spread of influenza.

ABSTRACT: School-closure policies are considered one of the most promising nonpharmaceutical interventions for mitigating seasonal and pandemic influenza. However, their effectiveness is still debated, primarily due to the lack of empirical evidence about the behavior of the population during the implementation of the policy. Over the course of the 2015 to 2016 influenza season in Russia, we performed a diary-based contact survey to estimate the patterns of social interactions before and during the implementation of reactive school-closure strategies. We develop an innovative hybrid survey-modeling framework to estimate the time-varying network of human social interactions. By integrating this network with an infection transmission model, we reduce the uncertainty surrounding the impact of school-cl

SUBMITTER: Litvinova M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6613079 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature