Analyzing the demographic, spatial, and temporal factors influencing social contact patterns in U.S. and implications for infectious disease spread.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Diseases such as COVID-19 are spread through social contact. Reducing social contacts is required to stop disease spread in pandemics for which vaccines have not yet been developed. However, existing data on social contact patterns in the United States (U.S.) is limited.

Method

We use American Time Use Survey data from 2003-2018 to describe and quantify the age-pattern of disease-relevant social contacts. For within-household contacts, we construct age-structured contact duration matrices (who spends time with whom, by age). For both within-household and non-household contacts, we also estimate the mean number and duration of contact by location. We estimate and test for differences in the age-pattern of social contacts based on demographic, temporal, and spatial

SUBMITTER: Dorelien AM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8474922 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature