ContactPatterns is an interdisciplinary research collaboration aiming at the study of human contact patterns relevant for infectious diseases spread. We collect and analyze human contact patterns to advance the understanding of infectious diseases spread and evaluate control policies.
Following the initial spread of the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) epidemic from Wuhan, strict social distancing and movement restrictions were implemented throughout China, resulting in a marked decrease of transmission. To estimate changes in age-mixing patterns associated with COVID-19 interventions, we performed contact surveys in two cities, Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak, and Shanghai, one of the largest and most densely populated cities in southeast China. Read more ...
The use of school closure strategies is controversial, mostly because of the lack of empirical evidence about the behavior of the population during the implementation of these policies. Still, in some regions of Russia reactive school closure policies are implemented every year to mitigate seasonal influenza. Over the course of the 2015-2016 influenza season, we performed a diary-based contact survey to estimate: i) human contact patterns both during regular school/working days and when schools/classes are closed as a consequence of the school closure policy; and ii) the effect of the school closure policy on the spread of influenza. Read more ...
Human mixing patterns are the key to understand the transmission of infectious diseases and to inform transmission models used to support public health decision-making. Contact patterns relevant for the transmission of airborne infectious disease have been estimated for several countries. However, no data was available for Russia. We thus performed a population-based survey in Tomsk, Russia, asking participants to record all their contacts in physical person during regular school/working days. Read more ...
This initiative is supported by: