Social and Occupational Contact Patterns and Risk of Acute Respiratory Infections

Understanding social contact patterns and their relationship with risk of acute respiratory infection is crucial to inform transmission models and public health interventions to the COVID-19 pandemic and future seasonal and epidemic respiratory illnesses. Comprehensive investigation into the relationship between contact patterns and risk of acute respiratory infections is lacking and requires large community-level studies able to link behavioral and sociodemographic factors to infection risk as well as accessible tools to assess contact patterns. Using data from large national cohort studies of COVID-19 (Virus Watch), influenza and other common acute respiratory infections (Flu Watch) and infection syndromes (Bug Watch), this thesis aims to validate and refine measures of social contact and to quantify patterns of contact within the UK population and their relationship to risk of infection. Specific objectives are:
1) Adapt current social contact questionnaires into a shortened, accessible measures for use in research and surveillance.
2) For different methods of assessing contact patterns (e.g. questionnaires, tracking applications, occupational contact classification), assess the acceptability/ease-of-use (measured by acceptance to provide data and successful completion) and interrelationships regarding estimated levels of contact.
3) Quantify the relationship between social and occupational contact patterns and risk of virologically confirmed, serologically confirmed, and syndromic acute respiratory illnesses during both pandemic (COVID-19 and H1N1) and seasonal periods.
4) To investigate the relationship between sociodemographic characteristics, contact patterns, and risk of illness using an eco-social approach.