A nice day for an infection? Weather conditions and social contact patterns relevant to influenza transmission

Although there is no doubt that significant morbidity and mortality occur during annual influenza epidemics, the role of contextual circumstances, which catalyze seasonal influenza transmission, remains unclear. Weather conditions are believed to affect virus survival, efficiency of transmission and...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one 2012-11, Vol.7 (11), p.e48695-e48695
Main Authors: Willem, Lander, Van Kerckhove, Kim, Chao, Dennis L, Hens, Niel, Beutels, Philippe
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Absolute humidity
Analysis
Bioinformatics
Disease transmission
Epidemics
Health economics
Humans
Humidity
Immunity
Impact analysis
Infections
Infectious diseases
Influenza
Influenza, Human - transmission
Interpersonal Relations
Low humidity
Low temperature
Medical research
Medicine
Meteorological data
Morbidity
Mortality
Pandemics
Precipitation
Precipitation (Meteorology)
School closures
Seasonal variations
Seasons
Social and Behavioral Sciences
Social Behavior
Social networks
Social research
Studies
Surveys
Survival
Ultrasonic testing
Viruses
Weather
Weather conditions
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Although there is no doubt that significant morbidity and mortality occur during annual influenza epidemics, the role of contextual circumstances, which catalyze seasonal influenza transmission, remains unclear. Weather conditions are believed to affect virus survival, efficiency of transmission and host immunity, but seasonality may also be driven by a tendency of people to congregate indoors during periods of bad weather. To test this hypothesis, we combined data from a social contact survey in Belgium with local weather data. In the absence of a previous in-depth weather impact analysis of social contact patterns, we explored the possibilities and identified pitfalls. We found general dominance of day-type (weekend, holiday, working day) over weather conditions, but nonetheless observed an increase in long duration contacts ([Formula: see text]1 hour) on regular workdays with low temperatures, almost no precipitation and low absolute humidity of the air. Interestingly, these conditions are often assumed to be beneficial for virus survival and transmission. Further research is needed to establish the impact of the weather on social contacts. We recommend that future studies sample over a broad spectrum of weather conditions and day types and include a sufficiently large proportion of holiday periods and weekends.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0048695