Key info
Date:
27 November 2020
Authors:
Hayley A Thompson, Andria Mousa, Amy Dighe, Han Fu, Alberto Arnedo-Pena, Peter Barrett, Juan Bellido-Blasco, Qifang Bi, Antonio Caputi, Liling Chaw, Luigi De Maria, Matthias Hoffmann, Kiran Mahapure, Kangqi Ng, Jagadesan Raghuram, Gurpreet Singh, Biju Soman, Vicente Soriano, Francesca Valent, Luigi Vimercati, Liang En Wee, Justin Wong, Azra C Ghani, Neil M Ferguson1 and the Imperial College COVID-19 Response Team.
1Correspondence:
neil.ferguson@imperial.ac.uk
WHO Collaborating Centre for Infectious Disease Modelling, MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis, Abdul Latif Jameel Institute for Disease and Emergency Analytics (J-IDEA), in collaboration with:
Centro de Salud Pública de Castellón Valencia Spain, Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red de Epidemiología y Salud Pública (CIBERESP) Valencia Spain, University College Cork Ireland, Universitat Jaime I (UJI) Castello Spain, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Baltimore USA, University of Bari Italy, University Hospital of Bari Italy, Universiti Brunei Darussalam Brunei, Cantonal Hospital Olten Switzerland, Dr Prabhakar Kore Hospital and MRC Belgaum Karnataka India, Changi General Hospital Singapore, Sree Chitra Tirunal Institute for Medical Sciences and Technology Kerala India, UNIR Health Sciences School & Medical Center Madrid Spain, Azienda Sanitaria Universitaria Friuli Centrale Udine Italy, Singapore General Hospital Singapore, Ministry of Health Brunei
Now published in Clinical Infectious Diseases; 09-02-2021, doi: https://doi.org/10.1093/cid/ciab100
Summary
Since the end of 2019, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has spread rapidly across the world. Understanding the drivers of SARS-CoV-2 transmission is crucial for disease control policies but evidence of transmission rates in different settings remains limited. We conducted a systematic review to estimate the secondary attack rate (SAR) and observed reproduction number (Robs) in different settings and to explore differences by age, symptom status, duration of exposure and household size. A total of 97 studies were identified, 45 of which met inclusion criteria for meta-analysis. Households showed the highest transmission rates, with pooled SAR and Robs estimates of 21.1% (95% CI: 17.4%-24.8%) and 0.96 (95% CI: 0.67-1.32), respectively. Household SAR estimates were significantly higher where the duration of household exposure exceeded 5 days compared with exposure of 5 days or less. Attack rates related to familiar and prolonged close contacts, such as social events with family and friends were higher than those related to low-risk casual contacts, such as strangers (SAR of 5.9%, 95% CI: 3.8%-8.1% vs. 1.2%, 95% CI: 0.3%-2.1%). Estimates of SAR for asymptomatic index cases were approximately two thirds of those for symptomatic index (3.5% vs. 12.8%, p<0.001). We find moderate evidence for less transmission both from and to individuals under 20 years of age in the household context, but this difference is less evident when examining all settings. Prolonged contact in households and in settings with familiar close contacts increases the potential for transmission of SARS-CoV-2. Additionally, the differences observed in transmissibility by symptom status of index cases and the potential for age-dependent effects has important implications for outbreak control strategies such as contact tracing, testing and rapid isolation of cases. There was limited data to allow exploration of transmission patterns in workplaces, schools, and care-homes, highlighting the need for further research in such settings.
Translations
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- 日本語 - Japanese
- Español - Spanish
- Français - French
- Italiano - Italian
- Arabic - العربية
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