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arXiv · 1512.01065

Incorporating social contact data in spatio-temporal models for infectious disease spread

Sebastian Meyer·Leonhard Held
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Abstract

Routine public health surveillance of notifiable infectious diseases gives rise to weekly counts of reported cases -- possibly stratified by region and/or age group. We investigate how an age-structured social contact matrix can be incorporated into a spatio-temporal endemic-epidemic model for infectious disease counts. To illustrate the approach, we analyze the spread of norovirus gastroenteritis over 6 age groups within the 12 districts of Berlin, 2011-2015, using contact data from the POLYMOD study. The proposed age-structured model outperforms alternative scenarios with homogeneous or no mixing between age groups. An extended contact model suggests a power transformation of the survey-based contact matrix towards more within-group transmission.

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Sebastian Meyer, Leonhard Held. 2016-11-17. Incorporating social contact data in spatio-temporal models for infectious disease spread. https://doi.org/10.1093/biostatistics%2Fkxw051

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