Patterns of human social contact and contact with animals in Shanghai, China

Juanjuan Zhang,Yujian Song,Stefan Flasche,Hongjie Yu,Shengjie Lai,Xiling Wang,Petra Klepac,Alicia Rosello,Hao Jiang,Mark Jit,Meng Li,Juan Yang,Henry Lynn,Qingzhen Wei,Jonathan M Read

doi:10.1038/s41598-019-51609-8

Abstract

East Asia is as a principal hotspot for emerging zoonotic infections. Understanding the likely pathways for their emergence and spread requires knowledge on human-human and human-animal contacts, but such studies are rare. We used self-completed and interviewer-completed contact diaries to quantify patterns of these contacts for 965 individuals in 2017/2018 in a high-income densely-populated area of China, Shanghai City. Interviewer-completed diaries recorded more social contacts (19.3 vs. 18.0) and longer social contact duration (35.0 vs. 29.1 hours) than self-reporting. Strong age-assortativity was observed in all age groups especially among young participants (aged 7–20) and middle aged participants (25–55 years). 17.7% of participants reported touching animals (15.3% (pets), 0.0% (poultry) and 0.1% (livestock)). Human-human contact was very frequent but contact with animals (especially poultry) was rare although associated with frequent human-human contact. Hence, this densely populated area is more likely to act as an accelerator for human-human spread but less likely to be at the source of a zoonosis outbreak. We also propose that telephone interview at the end of reporting day is a potential improvement of the design of future contact surveys.

Highlights

Most of the major global infectious disease threats of the last decade have emerged from pathogens crossing the species barrier from animals to humans
We used two types of questionnaire delivery to quantify social contact patterns in Shanghai City, which is a hub for spreading infectious diseases due to its high population density and connectivity of the air transportation network
Large population-based surveys of age-specific social contacts exists for several European countries[10,11,12,13,14] and are increasingly conducted in low- and middle-income Asian (Thailand, Vietnam and Indonesia)[15,16] and African countries (Zimbabwe and South Africa[17,18,19], Kenya[20], Uganda21)

Summary

Introduction

Most of the major global infectious disease threats of the last decade (including epidemics of pandemic influenza A/H1N1, Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus and Ebola) have emerged from pathogens crossing the species barrier from animals to humans. We used two types of questionnaire delivery (self-completed and telephone interview) to quantify social contact patterns in Shanghai City, which is a hub for spreading infectious diseases due to its high population density and connectivity of the air transportation network. Such studies are rare and to our knowledge none assess consistency between self-reporting studies and telephone interviews Another gap we identified involves characterizing and measuring human-animal contact. Our current study has three aims: (i) quantify local human-human (H-H) and human-animal (H-A) contacts in an urban setting in China, (ii) explore the interaction between H-H and H-A contact, and (iii) assess consistency between two different modes of data-collection, self-reporting and telephone interview-led studies

Methods

Results

Conclusion