The influence of Influenza A(H1N1)v infection on social contact behaviour in the United Kingdom

Abstract

Introduction: During the In'uenza A(H1N1)v outbreak of 2009-2010 a study was set up to collect information on contact behaviour during ill and healthy condition. The aim of the study was to investigate whether contact patterns di'er when participants were feeling ill or not.

Methodology: Estimation of the contact rate matrices involved a weighted average approach for a dataset considering full contact information and for a dataset consisting of the contacts capped at 33 as well as estimation based on a censored negative binomial likelihood. The comparison is based on 3 measures: the ratio of R0's, the Euclidean distance between normalised leading eigenvectors of the next generation matrix and the sum of the absolute di'erences.

Results: Studying the participants with contact information during ill and healthy condition (140) and the comparison of ill participants (283) to POLYMOD UK participants (1012) showed signi'cant di'erences between contact patterns. Where a reducti