Social contact patterns relevant to the spread of respiratory infectious diseases in Hong Kong

Kathy Leung,Eric H Y Lau,Joseph T Wu,Mark Jit

doi:10.1038/s41598-017-08241-1

Abstract

The spread of many respiratory infections is determined by contact patterns between infectious and susceptible individuals in the population. There are no published data for quantifying social contact patterns relevant to the spread of respiratory infectious diseases in Hong Kong which is a hotspot for emerging infectious diseases due to its high population density and connectivity in the air transportation network. We adopted a commonly used diary-based design to conduct a social contact survey in Hong Kong in 2015/16 using both paper and online questionnaires. Participants using paper questionnaires reported more contacts and longer contact duration than those using online questionnaires. Participants reported 13 person-hours of contact and 8 contacts per day on average, which decreased over age but increased with household size, years of education and income level. Prolonged and frequent contacts, and contacts at home, school and work were more likely to involve physical contacts. Strong age-assortativity was observed in all age groups. We evaluated the characteristics of social contact patterns relevant to the spread of respiratory infectious diseases in Hong Kong. Our findings could help to improve the design of future social contact surveys, parameterize transmission models of respiratory infectious diseases, and inform intervention strategies based on model outputs.

Highlights

Many respiratory infectious diseases are transmitted through close person-to-person contacts
A social contact survey embedded with a serological survey was conducted in Hong Kong in 200913, 33, but the age of contacts was only reported for a few age groups, and it is difficult to construct customized age-specific contact matrices from the available data
We conducted a population-based social contact survey in Hong Kong using participant-completed diaries similar to those used in the European POLYMOD study by Mossong et al.[4]

Summary

Introduction

Many respiratory infectious diseases are transmitted through close person-to-person contacts. We found that participant age, household size, education, income level and mode of questionnaire were significantly associated with the number of reported contacts in the Kruskal-Wallis tests.

Results

Conclusion