Estimating age-mixing patterns relevant for the transmission of airborne infections.

ABSTRACT:

Introduction

Age-mixing patterns can have substantial effects on infectious disease dynamics and intervention effects. Data on close contacts (people spoken to and/or touched) are often used to estimate age-mixing. These are not the only relevant contacts for airborne infections such as tuberculosis, where transmission can occur between anybody 'sharing air' indoors. Directly collecting data on age-mixing patterns between casual contacts (shared indoor space, but not 'close') is difficult however. We demonstrate a method for indirectly estimating age-mixing patterns between casual indoor contacts from social contact data.

Methods

We estimated age-mixing patterns between close, casual, and all contacts using data from a social contact survey in South Africa. The age distribut

SUBMITTER: McCreesh N 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6731521 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature