ArticleScience (New York, N.Y.)2020
Changes in contact patterns shape the dynamics of the COVID-19 outbreak in China.
Article in Science (New York, N.Y.), 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 596 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
596 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Pooled it
- Effects of non-pharmaceutical interventions on COVID-19 transmission: rapid review of evidence from Italy, the United States, the United Kingdom, and China.Frontiers in public health · 2024Pooled it
- Effectiveness of social distancing measures and lockdowns for reducing transmission of COVID-19 in non-healthcare, community-based settings.Philosophical transactions. Series A, Mathematical, physical, and engineering sciences · 2023Pooled it
- Role-specific household contact patterns in urban and rural China: Implications for influenza household transmission.Infectious Disease Modelling · 2027Article
- Influenza vaccine protection and contact patterns among outpatients with influenza-like illness during the 2024-2025 season in China: a test-negative case-control study.Journal of global health · 2026Article
- Beyond mean-field age-structured models: degree heterogeneity and cross-country variability in epidemic risk.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2026Article
- Estimation of transmission distance between cases of (re-)emerging respiratory infectious diseases and its potential application in outbreak response.Infectious Disease Modelling · 2026Article
- Assessing the costs and benefits of non-pharmaceutical pandemic measures using the economic values of social contacts.The European journal of health economics : HEPAC : health economics in prevention and care · 2026Article
- The impact of public health and social measures on social contact patterns and transmission of COVID-19 in Hong Kong.BMC medicine · 2026Article
- The impact of school-based mitigation measures on the transmission of respiratory pathogens: the case of SARS-CoV-2.International journal of epidemiology · 2026Article
- SARS CoV-2 seroprevalence and rising antibody titres across successive pandemic waves in accra, Ghana: August 2020 to January 2022.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Absolute humidity drives seasonal influenza A transmission in Hong Kong through social contact modulation: Evidence from compartmental modeling.Infectious Disease Modelling · 2026Article
- Study on the resurgence of pertussis based on a stage-structured dynamic model.Infectious Disease Modelling · 2026Article
- Understanding human mobility patterns under a public health emergency.Infectious Disease Modelling · 2026Article
- Pandemic-driven immune imprinting accelerates evolution of human coronavirus OC43.PLoS neglected tropical diseases · 2026Article
- Intraindividual variability in non-household contacts: a German longitudinal study, April 2020-December 2021.BMC infectious diseases · 2026Article
- Mobility-driven synthetic contact matrices as a scalable solution for real-time pandemic response modeling.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Differential impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on sociodemographic groups: A mathematical model framework.PloS one · 2026Article
- Social contact patterns and associated factors survey of Shangrao City.Frontiers in public health · 2026Article
- Homophily within and across groups.Nature communications · 2025Article
536 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
12 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Intense nonpharmaceutical interventions were put in place in China to stop transmission of the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). As transmission intensifies in other countries, the interplay between age, contact patterns, social distancing, susceptibility to infection, and COVID-19 dynamics remains unclear. To answer these questions, we analyze contact survey data for Wuhan and Shanghai before and during the outbreak and contact-tracing information from Hunan province. Daily contacts were reduced seven- to eightfold during the COVID-19 social distancing period, with most interactions restricted to the household. We find that children 0 to 14 years of age are less susceptible to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection than adults 15 to 64 years of age (odds ratio 0.34, 95% confidence interval 0.24 to 0.49), whereas individuals more than 65 years of age are more susceptible to infection (odds ratio 1.47, 95% confidence interval 1.12 to 1.92). Based on these data, we built a transmission model to study the impact of social distancing and school closure on transmission. We find that social distancing alone, as implemented in China during the outbreak, is sufficient to control COVID-19. Although proactive school closures cannot interrupt transmission on their own, they can reduce peak incidence by 40 to 60% and delay the epidemic.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.