» Articles » PMID: 32546245

SOCRATES: an Online Tool Leveraging a Social Contact Data Sharing Initiative to Assess Mitigation Strategies for COVID-19

Overview
Journal BMC Res Notes
Publisher Biomed Central
Date 2020 Jun 18
PMID 32546245
Citations 37
Authors
Affiliations
Soon will be listed here.
Abstract

Objective: Establishing a social contact data sharing initiative and an interactive tool to assess mitigation strategies for COVID-19.

Results: We organized data sharing of published social contact surveys via online repositories and formatting guidelines. We analyzed this social contact data in terms of weighted social contact matrices, next generation matrices, relative incidence and R[Formula: see text]. We incorporated location-specific physical distancing measures (e.g. school closure or at work) and capture their effect on transmission dynamics. All methods have been implemented in an online application based on R Shiny and applied to COVID-19 with age-specific susceptibility and infectiousness. Using our online tool with the available social contact data, we illustrate that physical distancing could have a considerable impact on reducing transmission for COVID-19. The effect itself depends on assumptions made about disease-specific characteristics and the choice of intervention(s).

Citing Articles

Assessing the role of children in the COVID-19 pandemic in Belgium using perturbation analysis.

Angeli L, Caetano C, Franco N, Coletti P, Faes C, Molenberghs G Nat Commun. 2025; 16(1):2230.

PMID: 40044649 PMC: 11882900. DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025-57087-z.


Social contact patterns in South Korea: an analysis of a survey conducted in 2023-2024.

Son W, Chae M, Hwang D, Nah K, Kim M, Kim J BMC Infect Dis. 2025; 25(1):295.

PMID: 40025440 PMC: 11871801. DOI: 10.1186/s12879-025-10706-y.


Identifying the main drivers of transmission in the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic in Portugal.

Caetano C, Angeli L, Varela-Lasheras I, Coletti P, Morgado L, Lima P Sci Rep. 2024; 14(1):30689.

PMID: 39730359 PMC: 11680834. DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-76604-6.


Towards pandemic preparedness: ability to estimate high-resolution social contact patterns from longitudinal surveys.

Dan S, Tegegne J, Chen Y, Ling Z, Jaeger V, Karch A Res Sq. 2024; .

PMID: 39711531 PMC: 11661306. DOI: 10.21203/rs.3.rs-5182601/v1.


Contact behaviour before, during and after the COVID-19 pandemic in the Netherlands: evidence from contact surveys, 2016 to 2017 and 2020 to 2023.

Backer J, Vos E, Den Hartog G, van Hagen C, de Melker H, van der Klis F Euro Surveill. 2024; 29(43).

PMID: 39450517 PMC: 11513762. DOI: 10.2807/1560-7917.ES.2024.29.43.2400143.


References
1.
Hoang T, Coletti P, Melegaro A, Wallinga J, Grijalva C, Edmunds J . A Systematic Review of Social Contact Surveys to Inform Transmission Models of Close-contact Infections. Epidemiology. 2019; 30(5):723-736. PMC: 6684224. DOI: 10.1097/EDE.0000000000001047. View

2.
van Hoek A, Andrews N, Campbell H, Amirthalingam G, Edmunds W, Miller E . The social life of infants in the context of infectious disease transmission; social contacts and mixing patterns of the very young. PLoS One. 2013; 8(10):e76180. PMC: 3797797. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0076180. View

3.
Ogunjimi B, Hens N, Goeyvaerts N, Aerts M, Van Damme P, Beutels P . Using empirical social contact data to model person to person infectious disease transmission: an illustration for varicella. Math Biosci. 2009; 218(2):80-7. DOI: 10.1016/j.mbs.2008.12.009. View

4.
Verelst F, Kuylen E, Beutels P . Indications for healthcare surge capacity in European countries facing an exponential increase in coronavirus disease (COVID-19) cases, March 2020. Euro Surveill. 2020; 25(13). PMC: 7140594. DOI: 10.2807/1560-7917.ES.2020.25.13.2000323. View

5.
Eames K, Tilston N, White P, Adams E, Edmunds W . The impact of illness and the impact of school closure on social contact patterns. Health Technol Assess. 2010; 14(34):267-312. DOI: 10.3310/hta14340-04. View