North Carolina public school teachers’ contact patterns and mask use within and outside of school during the prevaccine phase of the COVID-19 pandemic

•Teachers are central to school-related networks; we surveyed 700 about behaviors.•As schools reopened in the COVID-19 pandemic, close contact was common in schools.•Among teachers and those around them, mask use was suboptimal outside of school.•Survey results underscore the need for multilayered m...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:American journal of infection control 2022-06, Vol.50 (6), p.608-617
Main Authors: Powers, Kimberly A., Sullivan, Kristin M., Zadrozny, Sabrina L., Shook-Sa, Bonnie E., Byrnes, Rosemary, Bogojevich, David A., Lauen, Douglas L., Thompson, Peyton, Robinson, Whitney R., Gordon-Larsen, Penny, Aiello, Allison E.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Behavior
Coronavirus
COVID-19 - epidemiology
COVID-19 - prevention & control
COVID-19 Vaccines
Cross-Sectional Studies
Humans
Major
Masks
Mixing
Modeling
North Carolina - epidemiology
Pandemics
SARS-CoV-2
School Teachers
Transmission
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Summary:•Teachers are central to school-related networks; we surveyed 700 about behaviors.•As schools reopened in the COVID-19 pandemic, close contact was common in schools.•Among teachers and those around them, mask use was suboptimal outside of school.•Survey results underscore the need for multilayered mitigation and messaging.•Survey estimates can inform mathematical models of infection transmission. Teachers are central to school-associated transmission networks, but little is known about their behavioral patterns during the COVID-19 pandemic. We conducted a cross-sectional survey of 700 North Carolina public school teachers in 4 districts open to in-person learning in November-December 2020 (pre-COVID-19 vaccines). We assessed indoor and outdoor time spent, numbers of people encountered at
ISSN:0196-6553
1527-3296
DOI:10.1016/j.ajic.2021.12.020